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IRELAND

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*HE OUTPOST

BY

GRENVILLE A. J. COLE

>^ F.R.S., M.R.I.A.

AUTHOR OF * IRELAND, THE LAND AND THE LANDSCAPE '
'the growth of EUROPE', ETC.

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* For it is a boterasse and a poste.'
Libelle of Englyshe Polycyt^ 1436.

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY

HUMPHREY MILFORD .^..

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IRELAND
THE OUTPOST

^'^

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BY

GRENVILLE A. J. COLE

F.R.S., M.R.I.A.

AUTHOR OF 'IRELAND, THE LAND AND THE LANDSCAPE*
'THE GROWTH OF EUROPE', ETC.

'For it is a boterasse and a poste.'
Libelie of Englyshe Folycye, 1436.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY

HUMPHREY MILFORD

1919

■%

'it., ^i

•T^if""*^

4 PREFACE

should lead to one conclusion ; but I would ask the reader
to draw that conclusion for himself.

Ireland has lain in the path of great migrations, from
Berber Africa, from the mouths of Frisian rivers, from
the viks and fjords of the sterner northlands. From her
own drowned valleys, the harbours that knew the ships
of Gades and of Gaul, her people have moved westward
and linked the old world with the new. At times she
catches the light that floods across from Europe, and adds
to its brightness the ardent glow of her response. At
times the sea-mist gathers along her mountain-barriers,
and she sinks back into the haze of the Atlantic, elusive
as the Fortunate Isles.

G. A. J. C.

'y^.

CONTENTS

I. IRELAND ON THE GLOBE

II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OUTPOST

III. THE PEOPLING OF IRELAND I

IV. IRELAND AND THE ROMAN WORLD

PAGE
7

II
23

34

V. THE HARBOURS OF THE NORTHMEN AND

THE NORMANS 39

VI. THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER AND THE IRISH

PLAIN 44

VII. UPLANDS OF THE NORTH J ... 56

VIII. THE ARMORICAN RANGES OF THE SOUTH . 65

IX. EXITS AND ENTRANCES. THE RAILWAY

MAP OF IRELAND . . . . .71

X. EPILOGUE

76

ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. I. The Central Plain of Ireland, from Slieve Bawn

near Strokestown .... Facing p. 12

Fig. 2. Ben Bulben, Co. Sligo. Limestone scarps and peat-
covered lowland .... Facing p. 12

Fig. 3, The Wicklow coast south of Bray Head Facing p. 46

Fig. 4. The site of Dublin, from the north end of the

Leinster Chain .... Facing p. 46

Fig. 5. The Devil's Glen, in the foot-hills of the Leinster

Chain ...... Facing p. 58

Fig. 6. In the highlands of Tirconnell, looking north-east-
ward towards Glen Beagh . . Facing p. 58

Fig. 7. The Curlew Hills from the north-west, with drum-

lins in the lowland^ . . . Facing p. 68

Fig. 8. In the Kerry highlands. Gap of Dunloe Facing p. 68
The illustrations are from photographs by the author.

MAPS

PAGE

1. Ireland in relation to Great Britain and north-western

Europe ........ 20

2. The Leinster Chain and the gates of eastern Ireland . 45

3. The Northern Uplands and the relations of Ireland with

Scotland

57

4. The Armorican ranges of the south .... 66

These maps contain the names of practically all the Irish
places mentioned in the text.

i

IRELAND THE OUTPOST

I. IRELAND ON THE GEOBE

Nature allows no ' self-determination ' to any point
on the surface of the globe. An isolated volcanic peak
rising from oceanic depths is \yashed by a stream-current
that conforms at its place' of origin to continental shores.
It is swept by winds^ that can be traced into the trade-
zones, or perhaps to the whirls of air around the poles.
A patch of desert in the centre of a continent, where the
streamlets, as mere intruders, die away in deltas of
brown sand, leads our thoughts along the ravines and
across the hill-cre^s to fertile lands that feel the rain»
The study of a limited area may, for scholastic reasons,
be carried outwards from the homestead to the globe ;
but to comprehend the homestead and its home-folk,
from the thatch of the roof to the colour of the children's
hair, we must find the locality on the domed surface of
the earth, and must realize that this earth is a very large
and dominant region round it. In fact, if we start from
the house and come full circle round the globe, we shall
have gone 25,000 miles before we reach its door again.

The text-books will tell us that Ireland lies between Location
certain paiallels of latitude and certain lines of longitude ^nj^"
on the surface of this great rotating ball. A true picture
of the earth should, then, always stand near us, a globe
and not a map. The old masters, who loved emblems
in their art, placed a skull beside the reUgious and a globe
beside the philosopher ; the latter, whatever his future
outlook, could at any rate appreciate the fullness of the
earth. We may do well, then, to regard from outer space
the position of Ireland on the globe.

^■v^ '

^

8 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

Ireland is seen to be an island, lying farther north than
Newfoundland, but set on the warm side of the Atlantic.
The prevalent winds from the south-west, themselves
warmed by passing over water not far from the limits
of the Gulf Stream, push forward a body of this water
as a drift-current that spreads into the arctic seas. In
our summer, the marine ice melts back as far as Spits-
bergen, and the whole western edge of Europe gains
warmth from the region of the Azores. Storms may beat
and rain may fall somewhat freely on the Atlantic shores
The of Ireland, but there is much to be said for her uniform
climate, despite her variable weather. The whole island
is affected by changes of pressure that take place over
the borderlands of the European continent, and these
lead to frequent disturbances of the general flow from
the south-west. Prolonged storms, connected with
Atlantic cyclones, or fine episodes lasting over two or
three weeks, may occur in any month of the year, and
this uncertainty of conditions imparts a sporting character
to the agricultural operations that are the main
industry of the country. On the other hand, man is
never driven from his homestead by a succession of arid
seasons or by the long persistence of inundations. Some
of the wettest lowlands will feed abundant cattle for the
export trade. The peat-bogs that developed when the
rainfall was greater than at the present day are now
drying and cracking on the upland areas, and are being
reduced greatly by the sweeping winds. Where they are
less exposed, as on the surface of the great limestone
plain, they furnish a cheap and easily won fuel. With
a roof above him for shelter in the days of storm (fig. 6),
the peasant may be tolerant of the climatic conditions
even in Kerry or the west of Galway ; he needs no
rainbow to assure him that the sun wiU ultimately

■■■r-

:c

IRELAND ON THE GLOBE

L

shine. With a house that he can call his own, and a few
acres of land round it, he may continue to live simply,
but may be at once content and prosperous. The general
mildness of the Irish dlimate has probably been an
attraction to discoverers and invaders, accustomed to
long months of drought in lands south of the Mediter-
ranean, or to rain-drifts that turned to snow against the
Scandinavian hills. Even the east winds that occasionally
sweep over Europe from the steppes are broken and kept
from Ireland by the mountainous west of Britain. North
winds are frequent on the Ulster coast, and bring sudden
changes of temperature down to the plain-land of Kildare,
such changes being especially noticeable in the months
of May and June. On the other hand, the general moist
warmth of the south-western counties is often oppressive
to the stranger, and exerts a restraining influence on the
activities of a tall, well built, and inteUigent population.

Though Ireland has its own characteristics, the island Relation
is by no means isolated. Just as the Lofotens are part of to Eura-
Norway, the British Isles are part of the drowned coast ^^*'
of Eurasia. Europe, omitting Russia, is a small north-
western offshoot of the continental mass that stretches
from the Iberian plateaus to the mountainous saUent of
Shaintung. The great lines of structure that were developed
in the broad region of Asia in Cainozoic times can be
followed into the promontory-lands of Europe. In the
far west, these lands converge, as it were, on Ireland,
which is thus the last outpost of Eurasia against the
oceanic depths of the Atlantic. The structural axes
traced from Asia into Europe run on into the outpost,
and the fact that it is an island, and its proximity to the
larger island of Great Britain, are the two fundamental
geographic influences on the course of Irish history.

'

10 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

Table of Divisions (Eras and Periods)
OF Geological Time

QUARTARY OR QUATERNARY ERA.
Recent. The Irish laad-area becomes finally an island.
Glacial. The Ice-age.

CAINOZOIC OR TERTIARY ERA.
Pliocene. The Irish area is terrestrial, with insular tendencies

at the close.
Miocene. Formation of the Alpine Chains.
Oligocene. Volcanic period in the region of north-eastern

Ireland and the Hebrides.
Eocene. The Irish area is terrestrial.

MESOZOIC ERA.
Cretaceous. The Chalk sea invades the Irish area.
Jurassic. The Lower Jurassic sea invades the northern Irish

area.
Triassic. Semi-arid period in the Irish- area. Extensive

denudation of Armorican land.

PALAEOZOIC ERA.
Permian. Limited marine invasion in the northern Irish

area.
Carboniferous. Deposition of the grey limestone in an

extensive sea, followed by an ujdift allowing of the spread

of coal-forests. At close, formation of the Armorican

Chains.
Devonian. Semi-arid continental period in the Irish area.

Formation of the Old Red Sandstone during extensive

denudation of the Caledonian land.
Gotlandian (Upper Silurian). Marine deposits. At close,

formation of the Caledonian Chains.
Ordovician ^Lower Silurian). Marine deposits.
Cambrian. Marine deposits in the eastern Irish area.

PRE-CAMBRIAN ERA.

Altered marine sediments and crystalUne igneous rocks, now
found remoulded and worked up into the Caledonian
Chains.

II

II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OUTPOST

In the north-east of the county of Antrim, an antique
group of gnarled and crumpled rocks, including highly
altered sediments and granites, has been exposed by the
removal of the basaltic lavas and the chalk. In the
county of Londonderry, and still more conspicuously as
we go westward into Donegal, the same group forms
a great part of the country. The trend of the earth-
folds in this area is nc«th-east and south-west ; if we
follow this trend from the sea-board, it leads us to the
Grampian Hills and to the Great Glen that provides
a waterway across Scotland (map 3). We pass on into
Europe, and the same lines of structure are at once
apparent in the snow-capped backbone of Scandinavia
(map i).

We have here, in these highly altered and crystalline The
masses, the relics of a great continent that once stretched

across to Canada, in what is called the Devonian period,
when fishes were the dominant creatures in lakes and
seas, and when nothing much more noble than a scorpion
moved upon the surface of the land. This Devonian
continent has been styled ' Caledonian ', on account of
the control exercised by its system of folding on the
structure of the Scottish highlands.

The heather-clad ridge of Slieve Camph or the Ox
Mountains, and the pallid domes of Mayo and Connemara,
worn by frost and rain out of ancient and resisting sand-
stones, are a portion of this continental mass. Throughout
the west of Ireland, extensive intrusions of granite have
still further emphasized the moorland character of the
uplands, and in the south-west a huge granite bar, which
oozed in its former molten state into one of the north-

man

conti-
nent.

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12 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

easterly upfolds, has weathered out as the axis of the
Leinster Chain (map 2). .On its flanks, the remains of
the long arch or cnist-tunnel in which it was moulded
are seen in the slaty rocks that lie on the east side between
it and the sea, and on the west side between it and the
■ limestone levels of Kildare. The streams fed by cloud-
drift on the upland have washed out broad open basins
on the crumbhng surface of the granite, and, as they
become more concentrated, have cut steep ravines across
the stratified series on the margins (fig. 5). There is
a striking contrast between these wooded glens and the
inhospitable moorland at their heads. The backbone of
Leinster bars out for eighty miles the interior of the
country from access to the eastern sea. Even the natural
gates of. Wexford and Waterford, on the drowned valleys
of the Slaney and the Suir, were limited as means of
entry to Ireland by the proximity of a race bred in the
Leinster highland. The broad inlet of DubHn Bay,
where the granite is outflanked by the limestone of the
plain, affords, as we come up the channel from the south,
the first free way to the interior.
The Old Throughout the Devonian period, denuding forces were
Sand- active on the surface of the Caledonian continent, and
stone. semi-arid conditions are believed to have prevailed. In
desert-areas, reddish and purplish sandstones were formed,
where the waste products accumulated as broad cones at
the feet of the decaying hills. Occasional floods, operating
over wide areas of sun-dried detritus, spread beds of
pebbles across the lowlands, and here and there more
regularly stratified sands and muds were laid down in
shallow lakes. These Devonian deposits are now
cemented into rocks of high resistance, and the whole
system of strata is styled the Old Red Sandstone.
In time, however, the continental surface sank, admit-

Fig. I. THE CENTRAL PLAIN OF IRELAND. From
Slieve Bawn, near Strokestown.

Fig. 2. BEN BULBEN, CO. SLIGO. Limestone scarps
and peat-covered lowland.

I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OUTPOST 13

ting the sea gently across the delta-flats of the Upper
Old Red Sandstone. A shore remained across Donegal
and central Scotland ; but the deeper and purer water to
the south encouraged a rich growth of marine organisms
over nearly all the Irish area. The abundance of corals,
sea-lilies, and shell-fish in the Lower Carboniferous epoch
led to the formation of a great thickness of limestone,
a rock easily attacked by weathering and soluble in natural
waters. Hence, over most of the limestone area, long
wasting of the surface has produced a lowland (fig. i),
the great central plain of Ireland, offshoots of which. The
proving the former extension of the limestone, stretch up pSi?
among the western hills. The modem seas have cut
into the plain on the west at Galway and Donegal Bays,
and on the east between the Liffey and the Boyne. Near
Sligo, however, which is one of the most beautifully
placed cities in our island, masses of the upper beds of
limestone still remain 1,500 feet above the sea, and their
huge vertical scarps, like those of the Pennine Chain, are
superposed on the earlier features of a singularly romantic |

country (fig. 2). j j

As the ' Carboniferous ' sea gradually shallowed, sands j

and shales replaced the limestone, and ultimately swampy
land appeared, on which the forests of the Upper Carbo- i

niferous epoch spread. A second system of earth-folds
then crumpled the region of western Europe, the thrust
coming this time from the south. The prevalent structure
of southern Ireland is due to this epoch of earth-move-
ment. From the Atlantic coast to Waterford (map 4) The
the folds run east and west, and the limestone, exposed can fold-
on the upfolds and caught in the downfolds, has been J.J|*"^

worn away more easily than the underlying Old Red River-
r, , TT .. • i! ^1- T 1 J 1. System of

Sandstone. Hence the rivers of southern Ireland have southern

worked their way along the downfolds, leaving ridges of ^'^®^*"^-

14 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

the harder and barren sandstone rock between them.
These rivers began their history on a fairly uniform
surface, which had been planed across the stratified mass
by long ages of denudation. The Upper Carboniferous
strata, with their forest-beds donverted into coal-seams,
were gradually but generally removed ; and the thick
mass of grey limestone became attacked throughout the
folded region. The tilt of the fairly even surface of
denudation that was thus developed was southward, as
we may judge from the courses of the Shannon, the
Nore, the Barrow, and the Slaney, and from the lower
courses of the Blackwater and the Lee (see maps 2 and 4).
In the working down of the formerly smooth surface over
the crumpled southern lands, the tributaries of these
southward-running streams have cut their way back
farther and farther westward along the downfolded
portions of the limestone, which became their natural
field of operations as the underljdng structure was etched
out. Many of the southward-running rivers, the original
streams * consequent ' on the general slope of the country,
have been cut across and tapped by the growing tribu-
taries of those lying eastward of them ; their upper
waters have in consequence been drawn off along the
capturing tributary to a more eastern outfall, while their
lower courses have been ' beheaded '. Where one of the
lower portions has survived, it may now appear as the
mere concluding reach of one of its own tributaries ;
it runs at right angles to the course of the 'subsequent'
tributary, which has assumed predominant proportions
along the limestone groove. J. B. Jukes,i when director of
the Geological Survey of Ireland, gave the first systematic

1 ' On the Mode of Formation of some of the River-valleys in
the South of Ireland ', Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. London, vol. xviii,
p. 378 (1862).

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OUTPOST 15

account of the relation of the rivers to the former
surface and to the underlying structure of the south, and
his carefully reasoned paper has served as a classic model
for observations on what is now known as ' river-capture '.
The net result, then, of the crumpling that took place
in late Carboniferous times, combined with exposure to
weathering during several later epochs, has been the
production of a series of valleys, in which woodlands
gather, and in which tillage can be carried on in some-
what stiff clay soils. The walls of these valleys are
formed of barren moorlands, set with ledges of grey and
purple rock. The structure is well realized when we
ascend the Knockme'aldown range from the plain at
Clogheen, west of Clonmel, by the* pass that leads over
to Lismore. The vale of the Blackwater to which we
then descend from the Old Red Sandstone ridge repeats
along its narrow limestone floor the features of the great
plain that we left behind us in the north.

In Kerry and the west of the county of Cork, the
residues of limestone are still more limited, and the Old
Red Sandstone asserts itself in the serrated ridge of
Carrauntoohil, in the deeply-dissected mountains of
Killarney and Glencar, arid in the desolate moor of
Gouganebarra. Six miles south of the railway from
Killarney to Cahersiveen, we may find ourselves in tangled
forests where the only passage lies along the guiding
streams. Then, through some notch of the grey crags
(fig. 8) we may pass to a further downfold, where a strip
of soft shale or limestone has produced a sudden contrast,
where the land has long invited settlers, and where the
white farmsteads are grouped along a natural highway
that leads westward to the sea.

The continent recorded in this second series of European
earth-folds is styled ' Armorican ', from the jutting relic

i6 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

of it still exposed in the wind-swept promontory of
Brittany. This relic is paralleled in Cornwall, and
Armorican land rises boldly in the South Wales coalfield
and in the terraced Brecknock ranges that bound the
valley of the Usk. A patch remains as the Mendip Hills,
and borings have shown us that a ridge comparable with
those of southern Ireland underlies London and connects
England with the Ardennes. Away in the heart of
modem Europe, the Europe of late Cainozoic times,
blocks of this far older Armorican continent form the
Vosges, the Schwarzwald, and the Slavonic stronghold
of Bohemia, while Armorican masses, long buried under
younger strata, have been caught up and reared to
dangerous eminence, towering to-day as the noblest
features in the young earth-folds of the Alps.

The connexion of southern Ireland with the Cornwall
of Arthurian romance, and across Cornwall with the land
of Iseult the maiden-wife, is, then, far more than a matter
of human story. The Armorican continent, however, has
become broken like the fragments of an ancient tale, and
remains a mere palimpsest for the earth-records of far
later times.

In the course of geological ages, the Cretaceous sea
began to spread over all this region, depositing white
chalk in its pure water, and sandy beaches in addition
in the north of Ireland. Once more the invading ocean
from the south-east was checked on the stubborn hills of
Donegal ; but at the opening of the Cainozoic or Tertiary
era chalk must have covered a considerable part of
eastern Ireland. The upUft of the sea-floor, and the
consequent development from Ireland to Scandinavia
of rolling downs of chalk, like those remaining as the
Salisbury plateau at the present day, was the first act
in the growth of modern Europe.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OUTPOST 17

The warped and rising land cracked open. Through The
hundreds of vents, basaltic lavas flowed from the depths epoch,
where rocks lay molten in the crust. They filled and
flooded over the hollows of the downs, destroying the
vegetation, levelling up the country, and converting it
into a rugged waste. These conditions extended north-
ward beyond the region of the Faroes, and they have
prevailed in Iceland to the present day. The volcanic
outbreak in Ireland heralded the vast movements that
shattered the Armorican floor, folded and overfolded
Mesozoic and Cainozoic strata in the Pyrenees, the Alps,
and the Carpathians, and sent the waves of their ground-
swell across France and England to the western margin
of the outpost. j

The outpost land, however, was not again submerged,
and it was closely held by the new continent of Europe.
It is true that the extension of the Atlantic Ocean began
to threaten its existence on the west ; but the Irish Channel
and the North Sea are very modern features. Some of
the invertebrate animals still found in Ireland may have
entered the area by land in late Pliocene times and may
have survived the Glacial cold on ground now lost to
us in the west. The comparatively recent date of the
movements that have determined the present boundaries
of Ireland is well seen from the geological evidence in
the south-eastern area. A plane of denudation had been
worn across the folded rocks of Waterford, Pembroke,
and Cornwall, probably with the aid of the early Pliocene
sea. An uplift followed, which allowed the streams that
wandered on this surface to convert their valleys into
gorges in maintaining their connexion with the sea.
Then a downward swing occurred, and the opening of
the cold Glacial epoch found these young valleys partially The
drowned and marine water already in the Irish Channel. epoSi.

2244 B

i8 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

A long glacier that came down between England and
Ireland from the north drove out the sea before it, and
carried mud and sand, enclosing foraminifera and mol-
luscan shells, to heights of more than 1,500 feet across
the bordering lands. The ice-sheets that occupied the
. interior of Ireland profoundly modified the surface, as
became apparent when they finally melted and shrank
back. The rock-floor was polished and scratched by the
stones and sand carried in the ice ; but this ' englacial '
material, together with a vast quantity of clay, represent-
ing all that was loose or could be loosened on the land-
surface over which the glaciers moved, was left as the
solid residue of the composite mass that we call an ice-
Boulder- sheet. This ' boulder-clay ', or more strictly ' boulder-
loam ', often remains as a thick deposit, levelled on its
surface by flooding waters from the ice-edge and by the
subsequent sweep of wind and beat of rain. In other
places; where it was irregularly distributed in the ice,
the boulder-loam forms steep-sided hills, elongated in
the direction in which the ice-sheet moved. These hills,
to which the name ' drumlin ' has been restricted,^ may
be more than a hundred feet in height (fig. 7). Lakelets
gather between them, and the post-Glacial streams have
been forced to take winding courses round their margins.
In addition, the rivers that ran beneath the melting ice
have left casts of their channels in the form of ridges
and elongated mounds of roughly stratified sand and
gravel, along which many of the early road-tracks have
been carried. These ridges are now well known to
geologists as ' eskers ', and the almost continuous series,
the Eisgir Riada, that can be traced from Galway Bay

^ Maxwell H. Close, ' Notes on the General Glaciation of
Ireland', Journ. R. Geol. Soc. Ireland, vol. i, pp. 211 and 212
(1867).

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OUTPOST 19

outpost
becomes
an island.

to near Dublin was selected about a. d. 125 by the rival
kings of north and south as a line of division across the
island.

When warmer times returned, an upward swing of the
uncertain continental edge had again joined Ireland with
Britain and the mainland, and peat and forest spread
over wide areas that are now submerged. The great
deer, Cervus giganteus, which is now extinct, roamed
from the Atlantic shores of Ireland into Baltic lands.
The connexion between Great Britain and Ireland was The
probably severed before early man came into the outpost.
The great low-lying delta between Britain and Scandi-
navia, on which the Thames was tributary to the Rhine,
became also invaded by the sea, and the passage, where
eighteen miles of water have controlled our English
history, was carved by wave-action,* on the course of an
earUer valley, between the newly formed North Sea and
the English Channel. Great Britain was thus also marked
off from the Continent, and Ireland, as an island beyond
an island, became still more emphasized as the outpost.

To understand, then, the present position of Ireland
in the economy of Europe, and the natural regions of mary
Ireland in regard to one another, we must realize that
the country and these natural regions have been moulded
by a long series of changes that affected an area much
more extensive than the outpost. The early movements
that we call ' Caledonian ' gave us the intractable high-
lands of Connaught and Donegal, the stubborn slate-
strewn fields of Down, and the forbidding barrier of
Leinster that guards the plainland on the east. The

> Perhaps along a valley caused by the overflow of a lake
formed on the front of the shrinking North Sea ice, as suggested
by P. F. Kendall in ' The British Isles ', Handhmh der regionalen
Geologic, Band iii, Abt. i, p. 310 (1917).

B 2

Sum-

20

IRELAND THE OUTPOST

inflow of the Carboniferous sea furnished the limestone
that prevails across the central plain. The mountain-rim
was completed in the south by the ' Armorican ' wrink-

r ■• ■■ ■• ■■ jf

Fathoms

OVER lOOO
too - 1000

so - too

UNDER so

Land invr ZOO metrzs
Scale of Miles

lOO

■

Map I. Ireland in relation to Great Britain and north-
western Europe.

lings of late Carboniferous times. In the Cainozoic era,
the high plateaus of Antrim were superposed upon milder
domes of chalk, while the block of the Mourne Mountains
was added to the country, where one of the cauldrons of

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE OUTPOST 21

molten rock cooled down as a mass of granite under its
cover of Silurian shales. From Triassic times onwards,
denudation has swept from the country nearly all the
Coal Measures that once stretched above the limestone
of the plain. In compensation, this limestone, and much
of the Old Red Sandstone uplands in the south, have
been covered by boulder-loams, deposited as the ice-
sheets of the Glacial epoch melted, and the dry cold
episode that for a time drove life out of the area has in
the end largely contributed to the fertility of Irish land.
The final earth-movements that established Ireland as
an island left her with high ground on her margins, and w
with natural harbours formed by the drowning of valleys
that led up far among the hills. Where the sea has
reached inwards against the limestone plain, still more
serviceable gates occur. Galway and Sligo on the Atlantic,
and Dublin Bay, opening towards the parent lands of
Europe, form effective breaches in the sheltering girdle
of great hills.

Neither here nor in Britain has true geological stabiUty
been achieved. The raised beach at Larne, whence the
steamers start for Scotland, contains chipped flints side
by side with marine mollusca, and thus shows that an
uplift of some 20 feet has occurred on the north-east
coast since man settled in the country. We have no proof
that the west of Ireland has been lowered since the epoch
of the submerged forest-beds ; but the legends of lost
isles may well have had an origin in human observation.
The traditionary island of Brasil appears somewhere in Brasii.
the position of the Porcupine Bank in a French manu-
script chart drawn about 1660.^ This record was made

1 W. Frazer, ' On Hy Brasil ', Journ. R. Geol. Soc. Ireland,
vol. V, p. 128 (1879), where the date 1640 is suggested. Also
T. J. Westropp, ' Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the North
Atlantic', Proc. R. Irish Acad., vol. xxx, sect. C, p. 223 (1912).

22 -IRELAND THE OUTPOST

when the Strait of Dover was closed to the Netherlands
during war, and when Dutch ships bound for the Indies
reached the Atlantic round the north of Scotland. The
beUef in Brasil descended to the cartographer who
recorded Nelson's voyages in 1815 ; but the location had
by this time shifted southward. The Porcupine Bank is
formed, as dredgings have shown us/ around a core of
rocks similar to those of Carlingford. Though it now
lies 500 feet below the surface of the sea, it once rose as
an isle beyond the outpost, and subsidence, combined
with the Atlantic scour, may have involved it in recent
and somewhat swift destruction.

The west coast of Ireland still suffers from the tremen-
dous surge of the Atlantic. The sharp cones of Tearaght
and the Skelligs attest the undermining and flaking action
of the waves. The level shelves of Clare and of the Aran
Islands are being lifted from one another, slab by slab.
The dome of Croaghaun in Achill has been cut back to
its very heart ; and away in the north, on the quartzite
mountain of Slieve League, the noblest cliffs in our
islands rise 2,000 feet from a sea where few ships venture.
The size of these huge rock-walls is scarcely realized
until the clouds gather at evening half-way between their
crowning edges and the restless foam-ring at their feet.
Yet, in face of all this battery, Ireland remains as a
coherent geographical entity, bounded by a strong frontier
on the sea. Like Verdun, the outpost * tient tou jours '.

1 G. A. J. Cole and T. Crook, ' On Rock-specimens dredged
from the Floor of the Atlantic', Mem. Geol. Sum. Ireland (1910).

23

III. THE PEOPLING OF IRELAND

To the early venturers, and even down to the days of
steam-navigation, there was a marked difference between,
the ocean and the ' narrow seas '. When forests pre-
vailed across the mainland, and only the higher uplands
and the coastal fringes enjoyed the sunlight, continuous
routes for travel could best be found along the sea.^
After the close of the Glacial epoch, the north-western
prolongation of Eurasia dipped, as we have seen, towards
the Atlantic, and a part of its low peat-covered ground influence
became submerged. The marine band of the Mediter- indented
ranean formed a sound between Alpine Europe and <^o*^*-
Alpine Africa, a survival from the larger ' midland sea '
that once stretched eastward over India. On the north
of the new Europe, the sea had entered between Britain
and Scandinavia, flooding the joint delta of the Humber,
Thames, and Rhine, and had found an outlet southward
by the Strait of Dover. After man had settled in the Danish
region, subsidence opened a channel from the North Sea
to the Baltic ; and hence, as human communications
grew, the ships of the Levant, laden from the caravans
of Baghdad, could transfer their bales to reindeer-sleighs
at Torne^. There, in a figure, is the history of European
civilization. I

Meeting one another as conflicting tribes in lands that
narrowed westward, making their ways along the pro-
montories until they came to the inevitable open water,

» See H. J. Fleure, ' Ancient Wales — anthropological evidences ',
Trans. Roy. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, 1915-16, p. 75 (1916), and
H. J. Fleure and L. Winstanley, ' Anthropology and our Older
Histories', Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., vol. xlviii, p. 155 (1918).
These papers contain much valuable discussion of early immigra-
tions into Ireland

24 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

fashioning boats and going forth to occupy, not only
new shores, but unexpected isles, the men whom we call
primitive carried their practical arts and their ideals of
culture from harbour to harbour of the indented coast.
We group successive waves of humanity together as
palaeolithic, neolithic, and so forth ; but it is difficult to
conceive the length of time required for the establish-
^ ment of any of these types as dominant in a-given district
of the earth. Thanks to the narrow seas of Europe, the
inventions of one group became superposed on groups of
diverse origins, without the delay involved in great
migrations ; and thus even the folk of the outpost, in
prehistoric as well as in historic days, came again and
again under eastern influences without being entirely
overrun.
The Can we picture the first arrival of the Mediterraneans,

settlers, rowing in their light vessels, perhaps scarcely larger than
the curraghs of to-day, from ria to ria of Iberia and
Armorica ; reaching that other Armorican land of
Cornwall ; crossing the great indent of the Bristol
Channel ; and finally, from the bleak promontory of
Pembroke or the unprofitable sands of Anglesey, descend-
ing on the inviolate Irish coast ? The shore itself, with
its flats of boulder-loam, which are rehcs of land that
once stretched across the Irish Sea, presented grassy
terraces fit for camps and cultivation. Beyond them,
the wooded glens harboured no enemies but wild beasts,
and the attractive and open moorland at their heads was
visible on the skyline from the beach (fig. 3). The short
rivers, consequent on the Leinster Chain, were not yet
contaminated by inland farms. The water came dawn,
in this temperate climate, freely throughout the year to
its sluggish loops among the grasslands, and the noise of
its rapids in the ravines led the venturers upwards to the

THE PEOPLING OF IRELAND

25

falls. At the north end of the chain, a fertile lowland
stretched away indefinitely, covered with forests of oak
and holly. Through its midst ran the Liffey vale as
a guiding line for settlement. The Leinster upland, with
its freedom of air and sunlight, could here be reached on
gently rising slopes at a height of 500 feet above the sea.
The rugged dome of Howth commanded the bay, and
offered a good post for defence and observation. Charcoal
and split bones from primitive hearths can be found in
the talus on the edge of its cliffs to-day. We may conceive
the existence of a rivalry from the very first between
those who occupied the Irish gate at the Liffey mouth
and those who, entering by the glens, felt their way
towards it through the hills.

From this coast, and probably also from the south, the
long-headed neolithic race laid the foundation of the
Irish folk. The language that these settlers brought with
them from the Mediterranean and from temporary homes
in Gaul was no doubt still flexible, and in time it may
have received a local tinge in the isolation of the west.
We have, however, no knowledge of it at the present day.
Various stages of neolithic culture ware probably repre-
sented among the seamen who reached the Irish coast.
These venturers must have brought their women with
them ; but from early days strength was gained by
intermingling with new arrivals from various European
shores. In the course of ages, local habits no doubt grew
up in the island. We may regret, from a modern stand-
point, that thehunters who sheltered in the narrow caves
of Ennis ^ were driven to cannibalism by the stress of
hunger or the fervour of religious faith ; but a very long
interval separates their primaeval habits from those of

' T. J. Westropp, ' Exploration of the Caves of County Clare ',
Trans. R. Irish Acad., vol. xxxiii, p. 71 (1906).

26 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

the people, still in the stone age, who met the wave of
broad-headed immigrants from the Baltic. The founding
of homes, the clearing of woodlands, the marking out of
limited areas as the property of something like a clan,
\ went on through unrecorded ages, with the usual accom-
paniment of jealous misunderstandings and selfish and
ill-considered raids. Bloodshed, murder, and the capture
of women, were no doubt sung as the foundation of
enduring fame, in days when the franchise of a man
could be earned by the mutilation of the slain. Yet in
all these struggles the bonds of association were growing
stronger within the boundaries of the tribe. The talk of
the young men was of warfare and the chase, but the
household year by year was advancing in the arts of
peace. A chief who had earned distinction with the spear
was proud towards the close of life to receive the title
* good ' or ' wise '. The long primary epochs of dissension
prepared the way for coalitions, though in prehistoric
Ireland, as in every other country, sparseness of settle-
ment and difficulties of communication precluded the
formation of a state.

It is too early to say that we possess accurate know-
ledge of the successive immigrations into Ireland. Anthro-
pologists, however, are hard at work in the reconstruction
of prehistoric history.^ It seems probable, according tp
Fleure, that a trading race of dark and fairly broad-
The headed Mediterraneans, following on the earlier long-
builders", heads, introduced the building of dolmens, of which
numerous examples occur in Ireland. These megalithic
structures are records alike of religious observances and

* See especially H. J. Fleure, in the Oxford Survey of the British
Empire, vol. i, pp. 298-317 (1914), and ' The Racial History of
the British People ', Geographical Review (Amer. Geogr. Sbc),
vol. V, p. 216 (1918).

THE PEOPLING OF IRELAND

27

of veneration for the dead, just as at.Rolde in Holland,
and among the cornlands of the Danish isles, so the
designers in Ireland often used boulders transported
by the glacial ice. In places the site of the dolmen may
have been determined by a sense of mystery attaching
to the stones. Sometimes the rocks were quarried on
a high exposure, and the monument attained dignity, like
that at Mount Venus near Dublin, from the natural
eminence that it crowned. The position of many dolmens,
on the other hand, on low ground and in sheltered places
shows that they were often associated with the homestead
of a chieftain or the communal holdings of a tribe. Now
and then, as in the meadows at the. foot of the great
dome of Knocknarea, an open area was marked out as
a sacred cemetery, and the abundance of megalithic
monuments gave rise to the story of a battle,^ the casually
spaced dolmens being held to enshrine the heroes almost
where they fell. The element of daring embodied in the
construction of a dolmen is nowhere displayed more
finely than in the superb example at Ballymascanlan in
the county of Louth. If the primitive type reminded the
builders of a house, and, by thinking backward, of a cave,
design has here progressed some way towards an artist's
dream of a cathedral.

The building of dolmens continued into the age of
bronze. The great mounds, moreover, of the bronze-age
architects cover stone structures of the dolmen type.
The solitary megaliths, formed by setting huge slabs on
end, represent a more primitive type of art, and for
a long time they led to nothing further in the way of
stones that point to heaven. Noble examples* remain
here, and there in Ireland, and some may be associated
with the first entry of neolithic man.

1 I owe this suggestion to Professor R. A. S. Macalister.

28 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

The building of round towers is also regarded as
a Mediterranean feature. The numerous instances in
Ireland are undoubtedly of Christian origin ; but the
architects of the sixth to the ninth century of our era
seem to have revived in connexion with ecclesiastical
requirements an earlier and once familiar form.
The Somewhere about 1700 b. c. a race of powerful broad-

age im- headed invaders reached the outpost, bringing with them
migrants, ^j^^ civilization that we associate with the use of bronze.
The best clue, however, to their settlements is given by
their pottery, and hence, from a particular type of
drinking-vessel, they are commonly styled the ' Beaker '
people. Their original home seems to have lain north of
the Alps, and they gradually occupied the south side of
the Baltic, prevailing over the long-headed ' Nordic '
folk who characterized western Germany and Scandi-
navia. They moved westward along the easily traversed
coastlands that led to the mouths of the Rhine and
Scheldt, and they established themselves in England as
•an important social stratum, to ^which the neolithic
Britons became underlings.^ In a far less marked degree,
they made their impress upon Ireland. They worked the
rich deposits of alluvial gold on the east flank of the
Leinster Chain into ornaments and objects of fixed
weight that came to have the currency of coins. The
double spiral patterns marked on the stones of their
huge tumuli have been traced from Mycenaean Greece
through Scandinavia to the Boyne.^ Though these

» Arthur Keith, Presidential Address, ' The Bronze Age
Invaders of Britain ', Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., vol. xlv, p. 12

(1915).

* George Coffey, New Grange [Brugh na Boinne) and other
incised tumuli in Ireland : the influence of Crete and the Mgean
on the extreme west of Europe in early times (1912), and The Bronze
Age in Ireland (1913). R. A. S. Macalister, whose work is always

THE PEOPLING OF IRELAND

29

broad-headed immigrants brought with them new and
fascinating arts, and had gained long experience in
European warfare, they failed in Ireland to produce any
general physical change by mingling with the folk whom
they overran. The long-headed Mediterranean race had
probably already received fair-haired and similarly long-
headed additions from the ' Nordic ' folk on the far side
of the North Sea.^ Despite the coming of the Beaker
people, the long-headed type prevails to-day throughout
the country.

Some authors are impressed by the fact that the bronze-
age or Beaker type of settler entered Britain without
metallic weapons, and later acquired the use of bronze.
Hence it is urged that these migrants came to us as
traders, and not as a conquering tribe. In Ireland,
however, the relative magnificence of their sepulchral
monuments, compared with those of the neolithic folk
suggests a desire to record something definitely accom-
plished in the land. Though the tumuli of New Grange,
Dowth, and Knowth stand near the port of the Boyne,
they are not the work of merchants bartering for a site,
but of men who held the country and in death proclaimed
themselves as kings.

The language introduced by the Beaker people is now
thought to be * proto-Celtic ', and to have thus laid

illuminating, would prefer to regard the Irish spirals as an inde-
pendent growth, marking a ruder type of the civihzation that
reached a climax in Mycenaean art (' Temair Breg ', Proc. R. Irish
Acad., vol. xxxiv, sect. C, p. 387, 1919).

» For a eulogistic appreciation of the Nordic type, see Madison
Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1918). To these long-
headed people, who are characteristic of Scandinavia, the author
assigns an eastern origin, distinct from that of the smaller neoUthic
Mediterranean race with which they have been associated by other
writers. ,

30 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

a foundation in Ireland for the Goidelic or Gaelic speech
introduced in far later times. Madison Grant ^ holds
that ' all the original Celtic-speaking tribes were Nordic ' ;
but it is not clear that any Nordic settlors who preceded
the Beaker people had acquired a Celtic tongue at the
early date of their immigrations. E. C. Quiggin ^ wrote
in 1910 that the Goidels of 600 to 500 b. c. were ' the
first invaders speaking a Celtic language ' who ' set foot
in Ireland '.

More than a thousand years after the arrival of the
Beaker folk, men skilled in the use of iron broke in upon
the outpost. Their chief contribution to Irish civilization
was the introduction of the new metal and of what are
called the ' La Tene ' designs, which find their type in
lake-dwellings at the northern end of the Lake of Neu-
chatel. If we call these people Celts, we associate them
with the vigorous round-headed folk, tall and possibly
fair-haired,^ who spread from Alpine Europe, that is,
from a mountainous district lying somewhat to the south
of the homeland of the Beaker people. It is more likely,
however, that the iron-age invaders of Ireland were
a long-headed group that had felt the pressure of the
Alpine folk. They formed, as it were, the outer fringe
of the expansion from Gallic lands that made itself
felt, some centuries later, in menacing descents on Rome.
Madison Grant * holds that these tribes were Nordic, and
he places their arrival in Britain no earlier than 800 b. c.
Fleure ^ believes that the Brythonic-Celtic language
reached south-eastern England not much before the
invasion of the Belgae — perhaps, then, about 300 b. c.

1 Op. cit.. p. 175.

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xiv, p. 757 (1910).

^ A brunet type of ' Celt ' is, however, recognized in the
Bavarian district. * Op. cit., p. 175.

^ Op. cit., Geographical Review, vol. v, p. 227 (1918).

THE PEOPLING OF IRELAND

31

Between these dates we may place the adoption of the
Goidelic or GaeHc language by the Irish folk.

A Goidelic race cannot be separately recognized, and
we cannot assert with any confidence that there are
' Gaels ' or ' Celts ' in Ireland. It is suggested that the
' Goidels ' whom Quiggin mentions entered Ireland across
Scotland, after a considerable period of residence in that
country. It must be admitted that great uncertainty
enshrouds the Irish language-question ; but we may
conclude that the introduction of Gaelic is contemporary
with the arrival of men who could support their culture
by the use of iron weapons. In about the sixth century
before our era, something new in the way of customs —
and even language is a custom — arrived from Europe to
the outpost, and for seventeen hundred years loosely
banded groups of tribesmen, whom we cannot describe
as Celts or Gaels, remained united in this one thing, the
acceptance of a Gaelic mould.

The traditions of the bronze and neolithic ages that
were handed down under Gaelic influences during the
age of iron would naturally impute a * Celtic ' social
system to those far more primitive times. The earlier
Irish population was never replaced by later settlers to
the extent that broad-headed immigrants replaced the
Mediterraneans in south-eastern England.^ Mentally,
however, the Irish people remained plastic and receptive,
and the most profound impression was produced by the
invaders of the age of iron. The Gaelic question in
Ireland is one of the best examples of the impossibility
of making language a test of nationality or race.

No anthropologist nowadays will support the contrast
alleged to exist between ' Celts ' and ' Teutons ', with

1 H. J. Fleure, op. cit., Geographical Review, vol. v p 227
(1918).

"5I

32 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

all the boastful controversies that have clustered on both
sides round these terms.^ The very names have been
used so indefinitely, and have been applied to such varied
racial groups, that they may well be abandoned by those
who strive for accurate conceptions. There is a glamour
yet in a ' Celtic ' twilight and a thrill of hope deferred
in the promise of a ' Celtic ' dawn ; but the Irish qualities
of imaginative insight, leading to a warm sympathy
coupled with a shrewd perception, and the power of
unbroken persistence against a sea of troubles, date back
far beyond the clan-system of Gaelic days. Though these
qualities were doubtless specialized and intensified by
isolated conditions in the outpost, they reached us with
the men who sailed from the Mediterranean and who first
opened up the forest-lands to the waves of European
immigration.

If the Gaelic habit spread comparatively rapidly in
Ireland among the southern representatives of the
Mediterranean race, some credit must be given to those
who introduced it from abroad. Tacitus, tired of Rome,
and ready to support the myth of the noble savage,
records the acceptance by British gentlemen of Roman
speech and Roman manners as a degradation and a mark
of servitude. Far more probably, it was a response to
their just and friendly treatment by Agricola, and by his
master Vespasian, who had met and respected them in
the field. The Anglo-Saxon tongue, on the other hand,
held its own against Norman French in England, and
Chaucer, the poet of a civil service that had changed
little since the Angevins, wrote in the vulgar language
that remained prevalent and that was, in the fourteenth

* For the modern point of view, see the critical essay by
A. Keith. ' The Ethnology^of Scotland '. Nature, vol. c, p. 85

(1917)-

\

THE PEOPLING OF IREtAND

33

century, perforce accepted in the schools. An opposite
example is found in the spread of Arabic speech through
northern Africa by a comparatively small number of
militant invaders ; and this may be traced to the enforce-
ment of an Arab religion by the imminence of slavery
and the sword. It is reasonable, then, to believe that an
imported language spreads with the culture, and especially
with the religious observances, that it represents. As we
have already hinted, there may have been something in
' proto-Celtic ' and ' Celtic ' customs, and in ' Celtic '
opinions on the afterworld, that appealed to the Mediter-
raneans, whose gods had deserted them in the outpost
at the coming of the iron spears. Even the terminology
of Irish townlands owes its present appeal and beauty
to expression in a Goidelic form. If we knew the earlier
tongue of Ireland, it might be interesting to trace transla-
tionS, and perhaps unintelligent corruptions, of Mediter-
ranean or Nordic place-names. Such grotesque forms as
the English ' Booterstown ' and ' Stillorgan ', with which we
may compare the twentieth-century ' Wipers ', may have
had their prototypes during Gaelic penetration into Ireland.
The evolution of ' Celtic ' civilization moved slowly
in the island, and century after century of the resonant
age of iron saw very little change in the material advance- ^
ment of the clans. It has often been remarked that the
epoch of Connaire and Cuchullain, when heroes fought in
chariots and a strong man matched himself against an
army at the ford, belongs to the Homeric stage of European
culture. The same culture prevailed in Britain down to
the coming of the Romans, and it is interesting to remem-
ber that, if communications had been more easy, Queen
Medb might have entertained Caesar Augustus in her palace
at Rathcroghan, while the fame of Finn MacCumhail
might have added to the apprehensions of Aurelian.

c

2244

KW*t;

34 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

IV. IRELAND AND THE ROMAN WORLD

The Romans, who easily crossed the ' sharpe narrow
sea ' of the Strait of Dover, were deterred from land-
ing as invaders on the Irish coast. Tacitus, in a
well-known passage,^ describes how his father-in-law,
Cnaeus Julius Agricola, ' garrisoned the coast of
Britain facing Ireland, actuated more by hope than
fear'. Just as the son of the British Cunobelin had
sought the friendship of Gaius Caesar ,2 so some chief,
probably from the Leinster uplands, had come over to
Agricola, in the hope of inviting the enemy into a dis-
united Ireland. Agricola, equally distinguished as a
general, an admiral, and an administrator, often spoke
of Ireland during his years of retirement in Rome. He
has also some claims as a practical geographer, for he is
said to have been the first to prove conclusively that
Britain was an island.* He had seen the Irish coast
from his ships or from the ridges of Snowdonia ; the
exchange of stories of adventure between the naval and
military officers in the mess-rooms of the ports, so well
described by Tacitus, had brought him attractive informa-
tion, and he felt that the cordon which he had drawn
round turbulent Britain was incomplete. The Irish
harbours were better known than those of Britain, since
trade already flourished with the western isle. It is
reasonable to suppose that the gold of Wicklow first drew
Gallic and Iberian merchants to the Irish ports. In his

* luHi Agncolae Vita, cap. 24, the Oxford Translation by
W. Hamilton Fyfe.

* On Adminius, who is a political type, see Suetonius, De Vita
Caesarum, Lib. iv, cap. 44. The true form of the name may have
been Amminus.

3 Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book Ixvi, chap. 20.

IRELAND AND THE ROMAN WORLD 35

armchair in Rome, Agricola used to say that a single Jj^^^"
legion and a few auxiliaries would have sufficed to conquer the mis-
Ireland, and that he would have used the subdued outpost Agria)ia.
as a restraint on the liberty of Britain.^

The extra legion, however, was not available, though
Agricola's great victory in central Caledonia had rendered
the northern front secure. It is now somewhat late to
regret the exclusion of Ireland from the Roman sphere
of influence ; yet we can appreciate what the outpost
lost when we see what southern Britain gained. PubHc
institutions, law-courts, artistic villas,^ were erected, as
in colonial Africa, by native benefactors of the State, and
we learn that Agricola favoured the development of
a local culture in the schools. Under Roman govern-
ment, Irish education might well have been bilingual,
and the travelled sons of princes, who recognized the
bonds of kinship through the clan, might have spread
among their less fortunate relatives a; knowledge of the
larger world. The sea-channel, however, proved a bar
even to Roman enterprise. The submergence of the
platform of boulder-drift between Holyhead and Dublin
has much to answer for in Irish history.

The inhabitants of Britain, brought constantly into
touch with Europe, learnt the defects as well as the
benefits of the Roman scheme of government. The use
of sections of the army as a persuasive aid in politics led
to troublesome insurrections and even to the choice of
local emperors. But we may believe that, when one of
these adventurers had removed the trained imperial
legions on a continental escapade, the appeal of Romanized
Britain for their return was inspired by affection as well

» See generaUy on this epoch C. Oman, England before the
Norman Conquest, pp. 90, 171, 175, &c. (1910).
2 Tacitus, luHi Agric. Vita, cap. 21.

C 2

36 IRELAND THE QUTPOST

as dictated by alarm. During more than three centuries,
a people had been raised from the Homeric stage of
culture to citizenship in the first imperial commonwealth.
The great untamed wastes of Eurasia, where every warrior
was a horseman and owned no settled camp, were now
menacing the indented coastlands of the west. Even the
Goths in Gaul and Italy fought against the east to main-
ly- tain what Rome had been. Ireland, however, excluded

mumty . . . . .

of Ire- by its outpost-situation from the common sympathies
*° ■ and perils of the empire, was not called on in the fifth
century to contribute to the struggle of civilization
against the Huns.

What Ireland received from Rome came to her un-
witting and unwilling. The prosperity of Britain under
the empire, of which we have good evidence in the towns
that are grouped even against the Roman Wall, was
known in the outpost,^ and tempted the Irish fishermen
to become raiders of the western shores. During the
exploration of a villa in South Wales, the story of one of
their incursions has been traced by the skeletons strewn
upon the tesselated floor, as surely and as terribly as on
the canvas of a Rochegrosse. Niall of the Nine Hostages,
whose family of eight sons enabled him to found two
dynasties in Ireland, organized an invading fleet in the
The critical closing years of the fourth century. In a descent
s?!?at- ^^ Bannaventa in the vale of Clyde,^ a boy and a girl,
rick. children of a Roman urban councillor, were carried into
slavery and separated in the crowd of captives. The girl
was lost sight of in the mountainous west ; the boy was

» R. A. S. Macalister {Pro(^ R. Irish Acad., vol. xxxiv, sect. C,
p. 281) points out that Cormac mac Art (a. d. 227-66) sustained
his power in Ireland by organizing an army on the Roman
model.

2 Or perhaps, as J. B. Bury believes, on the lower reaches of
the Severn (Life of Saint Patrick, p. 17, 1905).

IRELAND AND THE ROMAN WORLD 37

sold to a cattle-farmer near the Fochlad forest. The
locality remains obscure ; but for six years the young
Patricius served an Irish master. When he escaped, it
seems probable that a sea-route carried him, not to.
Britain, but to Gaul. An Irish sea-captain was not sure
at that time of a welcome on the harassed British coast.
Patrick proceeded to study with St. Germanus of Auxerre,
whose name is.fittingly recorded in a Cornish church and
town. A few years earlier, this vigorous ecclesiastic
had successfully combined in Britain both spiritual and
military campaigns. He had annihilated the Pelagian
heresy in the south, and a menacing army of Picts and
Saxons in the midlands. ^ The young Patrick's history
would appeal strongly to one who knew the geographical
relations of the islands. Rome could now gain a footing
in the outpost by nobler means than the imperial arms.

Patrick yearned to be the instrument by which Christian christian
doctrine could be spread among his former captors. Jicm <i^
A few isolated churches already existed in Ireland, but Ireland,
the opportunity had now come for annexing the very
stronghold of the Gaelic faith. Patrick's mission began
in A. D. 432, and its rapid success is as much a testimony
to his personal character as to the receptive disposition
of the Irish chiefs. Without any marked change of
manners or relaxation of intertribal feuds, Ireland took
to her heart the choicest gift of Rome. Her conversion
thus revived the ancient bond with Europe and the
Mediterranean. Whatever fate might fall on Britain,
Ireland was able to preserve, by the Armorican sea, the
Mare Gallicum, an open interchange of commerce and
ideas with Gaul. King Niall, indeed, was shot by a rival
Irishman somewhere near this Gallic Sea, and possibly
on the estuary of the Loire. i

' See Oman, op. cit., p. 196.

38

IRELAND THE OUTPOST

Devasta-
tion of
England

Scholar-
ship in
the

shelter
of the
outpost.

While St. Patrick and his followers were carrying out
their peaceful work in Ireland, the heathen Saxons landed
in the Isle of Thanet ; away in the north, they captured
Joyous Gard, the refuge of Iseult of Ireland, and they
ravaged the shores of Britain from Northumbria to the
Thames. The historian John Richard Green invites the
happily mixed race of modern Englishmen to regard
as sacred the spot that ' first felt the tread of English
feet ' ; ^ but the arrival of these ruthless ' Teutons ' of the
old Nordic stock was for long a blessing much disguised.
Green gives a frank and terrible picture of the war of
extermination carried on by them with German thorough-
ness for the next two hundred years. It ended in the
destruction of all that Rome had stood for, from Anderida,
the fort that watched the narrow sea, to Uriconium, the
white city at the gates of Wales. The internal troubles
of Ireland at this period seem small in comparison with
the sweep of the barbarians across Britain. In the shelter
of the outpost, Roman and even Greek letters remained
in the safe-keeping of the Irish monks. Kings who warred
freely on their neighbours within the island-sanctuary
yet vied with one another in the encouragement of
collegiate schools. Before the close of the fifth century,
Buithe, returning from Italy, founded north of Drogheda
the ' Monasterboice ' that still records his name. In
A. D. 548, when the West Saxons were pushing towards
the great ringed forts on Sahsbury .Plain, St. Ciaran
planted the first post of Clonmacnoise on a promontory
of the central Shannon, and was helped in his pious task
by a prince destined for the kingship. St. Kevin, himself
of royal blood, was forced towards the end of the sixth
century to transform his retreat among the Leinster
glens into a populous seat of learning. He had still some

» A Short History of the English People, chap. I, section ii.

IRELAND AND THE ROMAN WORLD

39

years to live, as the respected principal of the school of
Glendalough, when, on the opposite side of the channel,
^thelfrith stormed the Romano-British town of Chester,
and 1,200 unarmed monks, representatives of the culture
of the epoch, were slain on the open meadows of the Dee
in a vain appeal for miraculous intervention.

The events of 1914 to 1919 have thrown a vivid light
on the conditions of life in the outpost in the fifth, sixth,
and seventh centuries. Undisturbed by the crash of
European governments, the Irish scholars were free to
develop an exquisite taste in illuminated manuscripts
and a liberal cultivation of literary arts. The death-
struggle of the Christian church in Britain left them
without competitors in missionary zeal. Latin, the
language of cultivated Europe, had been preserved in
Ireland as a medium of intercourse with foreign lands.
Heroic monks now went forth to meet the heathen wave,
and even to check it at its source. Columba, from his
monastery of lona among the foam-swept Hebrid isles,
had penetrated the highland country of the Picts, and
Columban had revived Christianity in the forest-lands of
eastern Gaul, before Augustine, in a. d. 597, sought the
conversion of the Angles, and brought once more across
the narrow sea the message of immortal Rome.

I

V. THE HARBOURS OF THE NORTHMEN AND

THE NORMANS

In the ninth century, the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish,
united now by a common reUgious culture, became alike
threatened by the great expansion from Scandinavia.
The sea-rovers of the antique Nordic stock, who may be ^'^^^

, J , ., -VT , sion of

Classed together as Northmen, appeared at first as ruth- the
less pirates, weary of confirtement in their narrow viks Z°n^'

40 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

and fjords ; but they showed in the end an unexpected
genius for settlement and ordered rule. Facilities for
trade in the Baltic region had no doubt already influenced
the Northmen of the Swedish coast. The leaders who
were invited to Novgorod, who organized the strength
of Russia, and who met in a few years at Kiev the civiliza-
tion of the eastern empire, had acquired a larger outlook
than that of the raiders who first attacked the Irish
shores. The British Isles lay full in the track of the
ruder migrations from the west of Norway. Away in
the north the rovers harried Iceland, which had seemed
a safe retreat for a colony of Irish monks. They crossed
repeatedly to Greenland, much as their descendants do
in trading vessels from Tromso at the present day. But
in England and Ireland the Vikings came across monastic
centres that seemed to them veritable treasure-houses.
The wants of a raiding-party were often amply satisfied
by the brutal murder of a community of churchmen and
the rifling of the chests that held the gifts of kings. The
islets, outposts of the outpost, where the chant of lauds
and evensong was answered only by the crying of sea-
birds, now seemed jettisoned of God in a sea that swirled
with devilry. Even the Skelligs off the west of Kerry,
with their perilous approaches cut in the rock-iace, were
sacked by pirates who had scaled Torghatten or the
Lofotens. The sight of beehive-cells and the steep stone
roofs of churches attracted the rovers to the harbour-
heads. They discovered St. Finnbarr's town on the
marshland in the estuary of the Lee ; they sailed up the
drowned valley of* the Shannon, the Luimneach,^ and
rifled St. Mainchin's church on an ill-defended isle. The
spacious western sea offered them a certain safeguard ;

» T. J. Westropp, ' The Antiquities of Limerick and its Neigh-
bourhood', Roy. Soc. Antiquaries of Ireland, p. 7 (1916).

HARBOURS OF NORTHMEN AND NORMANS 41

but Ulster no longer kept a navy, and the strangers came

through the narrows and seized the shores of Dublin

Bay. Here they held the true and European gate of

Ireland, and from it, in successive descents, they harried

the villages in the plain. The unimportant group of

wattled houses at the first ford on the Liffey was soon

converted into a stronghold by the Northmen, who built Found-

their castle upon rising ground just above the anchorage Dublin. |

of the ships. The name of Dublin, derived from the

black pool of the river, has ever since been associated

with the settlement and dominance of strangers.^ In

spite of many attempts made by the plainsmen to eject

them, the Scandinavians here founded an abiding city,

which passed in 1170 into the hands of their Norman .

relatives, and not into those of the representatives of

central rule in Ireland. Scandinavian DubHn, by virtue

of its control of the great harbour opening to the east,

thus held its own for more than three centuries, and for

156 years after the disastrous but indecisive battle of

Clontarf . Hlimrek (Limerick) on the Shannon has almost

the same history ; the city, founded by sea-power, was

walled against enemies on the landward side. Carlingford, Norse

commanding the drowned valley of the Newry River ; inTre-

Wexford (the Wliite Fjord) on the broad white water at ^*"^

the Slaney mouth ; and Waterford, with its sheltered

anchorage far in among the hills, recall in their names

the grip of the Northmen upon Irish harbours and their

development of external trade. The Portuguese, Dutch,

and English settlements in the Indies afford many later

parallels with this chain of alien towns in Ireland.

When, however, we use the words ' stranger ' and * aUen ',

let us remember that the strangers of one century may

* See the historical account in S. A. O. Fitzpatrick, Dublin,
Ancient Cities Series (1907).

42

IRELAND THE OUTPOST

become the strength of a people in the next, and that the
mixed race of modern Irishmen owes more elements than
it is ready to acknowledge to the process of ethnic diffusion
through its eastern gates.

In estimating the strength of the Scandinavian cities
in the outpost in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we
should note that the Irish clansmen were no longer
struggling against isolated groups of raiders, but against
an organized force that had made its mark in Europe.
The Dublin that was attacked by Brian from his western
kingdom on the Shannon was, so far as reinforcements
went, a salient of the greater Denmark. Three years
after the battle of Clontarf, Knut. the Great, a Christian
like his kinsmen in Dublin, became master of the whole
of England, identified himself with his subjects as a
generous ruler, and kept the peace among them during
a reign of twenty years.

The chain of Scandinavian ports was broken in the

twelfth century by the Anglo-Normans, who forged it

again for their own advantage from within the island,

connexions being now established by cross-routes through

the plain. The harbours that were visited by Gallic and

Phoenician traders, and colonized by the valour and the

civic virtues of the Northmen, proved, as time went on,

essential to the safety of the Anglo-Norman state.

impor- Henry II spent most of his life upon the Continent,

of^tS unwilling to admit that his real domain lay westward of

to th^""^^ the narrow sea. Yet he recognized the close relations

English of the outlying islands of his realm, and ' by his power

England, Scotland, and Irelancf were brought to some

vague acknowledgment of a common suzerain lord, and

the foundations laid of the United Kingdom of Great

Britain and Ireland '.^ In proportion as England relaxed

* Alice S. Green, Henry the Second, p. i (1892),

HARBOURS OF NORTHMEN AND NORMANS 43

her larger claims and was driven out of France, so she
was inevitably urged to assert her hold on Ireland. The
great development of naviies in the English Channel from
the time of Edward HI to that of Henry V turned the
thoughts of statesmen keenly to the • harbours of the
outpost. The unknown author of the propagandist
poem ' The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye ', which was
circulated in 1436,^ puts the matter very plainly. jHe
had seen the triumph of the armies of the Maid, the
defection of Burgundy, the loss of Maine and Anjou, and
he looked on Calais as a sort of Gibraltar, the guardian
lion of the Dover Strait. ' English John Talbot ' had
been withdrawn from his difficult duties as viceroy of
Ireland to spend the last years of his life on the fighting
front in France. But the author of the ' Libelle ' knew
that danger might lurk also on the western shore, where
Ireland was to him ' a boterasse and a poste '. In times
when ships had come to hold the balance among the
powers of the Atlantic seaboard, the English king must
be Dominus Hiherniae in fact as well as name. No
enemy must be allowed to seize the harbours of the
European outpost. It is hard to realize that much of
the advice thus given still remains applicable after an
interval of five hundred years. The author remarks with
truth, ' I knowe with Irland howe it stant ', and he tells
us that his information came direct from the viceroy
Ormond. 1

The Yriche men have cause lyke to oures
Our londe and herres togedre defende,

> Variorum text, Thomas Wright, Political Poems and Songs
relating to English History (' Chronicles and Memorials of Great
Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages ', published under the
direction of the Master of the Rolls), vol. ii, pp. xl. and 157
(1861), See also Hakluyt, Voyages, Everyman Edition, vol. i,
p. 174.

44 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

That none enmye shulde hurte ne offende

Yrelonde ne us, but as one comonte

Shulde helpe to kepe welle aboute the see.

Ffor they have havenesse grete and godely bayes,

Sure wyde, and depe, of gode assayes,

Att Waterforde and coostis monye one.

As men seyn in Englande, be there none

Better havenesse shyppes in to ryde.

No more sure for enemyes to abyde.

VI. THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER AND THE

IRISH PLAIN

Before the epoch of St. Patrick's mission, the com-
parative ease of communication across the Hmestone plain
of Ireland had led to the establishment of a general
Tara. overlord, an ard-ri, whose court was held at Tara. This
flat-topped eminence, though rising only 500 feet above
the sea, commands a wide view ol the country, and was
no doubt a place for signal-fires and sacrifice before it
became the homestead of the kings. It is also significant
that Tara is by no means in the centre of the country,
but looks across to the Hill of Slane and the noble tumuli
on the Boyne.i The plateau of Rathcroghan, occupied
by the kings of Connaught, would have seemed more
suited for the offices of a federal system, and the choice
of Tara suggests very old tradition, going back to the
times when it guarded the camps of folk who had entered
from the eastern sea. In spite of the recognition of an
overlordship, the wars between Ulster and Connaught
continued, and the hostility of Leinster was intensified

» Since these words were written, the important study of Tara
by R. A. S. Macalister has appeared, emphasizing a connexion
between the remains on the hilltop and New Grange (' Temair
Breg', Proc. R. Irish Acad., vol. xxxiv, sect. C, p. 383, 1919).

THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER

4^

by the exactions, and perhaps also by the proximity, of
the central power. The whole spirit and policy of Leinster
were dominated by the great chain of granite, 80 miles
in length, that served as a natural fortress, approached

You;^al

Map 2. The Leinster Chain and the gates of eastern

Ireland. |

only by narrow lateral glens. The rocky walls of these
valleys, with their wooded clefts, provided ambushes
that told strongly in defence (fig. 5). On the eastern
flank, between the moorland and the sea, a fertile strip

46. IRELAND THE OUTPOST

The of drift-covered land runs from Bray Head down to
^^q£ Bannow Bay, sheltered from the western storms, and
Leinster. providing grass for cattle even if the soil is somewhat stiff
for tillage. Over this important coast-land, the men who
held the mountains held also the approaches from the
sea (fig. 3). Landing-parties might be allowed to straggle
up over the meadows ; the flag of the stranger might
wave gaily enough above his tents along the shore ; but
the dissected and difficult country lying inland from
Bray Head cut off his communications with the settled
port of Dublin, and his provisions must be brought
southward to precarious and open harbours on the coast.
The water-parting on the moorland formed a continuous
line for scouting, and even the passes, rising almost to
the summits of the chain, gave the Leinstermen the
advantage that is gained in our time by the observant
forces of the air.

An important economic factor in the early days was
the occurrence in a valley west of Arklow of rich deposits
Gold in of alluvial gold. This lay in the controlled zone of the
Leinster foot-hills. Even in 1436, Irish gold was still
known to jewellers in London ; but by that time the
most fruitful gravels had undoubtedly been worked out.
The ' gold rush ' of 1796 hardly paid expenses, though at
the time of its discovery the Wicklow nugget of 22 Troy
ounces (685 grammes) was the largest recorded in the
world. ^ The kings of Leinster, long after the palmy and
prehistoric days of gold-hunting, may well have regarded
themselves as custodians of a special treasury in Ireland.
The energies of these upland people were thus largely

* See Gerrard A, Kinahan, ' On the Occurrence and Winning of
Gold in Ireland', Journ. R. Geol. Soc. Ireland, vol. vi, p. 135
(1882), and W. W. Smyth, Records R. School of Mines, vol. i,
part 3, p. 400 (1853).

Fig. 3. THE WICKLOW COAST SOUTH OF BRAY HEAD.

Htt^

'-faiA-Alttafc'.-'

C..--..--V. .

W:-

'■ '^^•.

,-»?>;

• '"^%

J--«;

SJv^

I

Fig. 4. THE SITE OF DUBLIN. From

Leinster Chain.

the north end of the

THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER

47

influenced by geographical conditions and were generally
directed against the more fortunate dwellers in the
plainland. Their inborn love of raiding extended from
their tribal policy to a choice of alien wives. The famous
taxation forced upon them from Tara, and maintained
with irritating rigour for fully four hundred years, is said
to have been due to an act of treachery to a queen. The
alliance with Strongbow and his Cambro-Normans arose
from an abduction carried out in the far north-west
under the terraced Sligo hills. The menof the barrier of
Leinster, sufficient to themselves, gained little sympathy
from the cattle-owners of the central plateaus, and in
return gave little help towards an organized and effective
Ireland. Alliances were sought in Leinster with the The hill-
invading Northmen, and even Brian's rearguard was the
attacked in the valley of the Barrow while retiring with fj^t^e"
the convoys and the wounded from the hard- won victory plain,
of Clontarf. Dermot MacMurrogh had invited the
Normans into Wexford and Waterford, those old ports
of trade with eastern lands ; but, when these towns came
perforce under the feudal- rule of England, Dublin, as the
seat of government, was at once proclaimed the enemy
of Leinster.

In their attack on Scandinavian Dublin in 1170, the
Normans and their temporary allies of Leinster swarmed
down the slopes of Slieve Roe, the northern extremity of
the granite chain (fig. 4). A little later, the same slopes
were watched with some anxiety by citizens whose affairs
became more and more controlled by English policy
through the gate of Dublin Bay. The massacre of
prominent inhabitants of Dublin, while feasting in CuUens-
wood close to the city on Easter Monday 1209, illus-
trates the nature of the warfare carried on by the hillmen
against those whom they now regarded as intrusive

48 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

aliens. Bristol was nominated by the Crownti as a sort
of godmother to Dublin, and this city, famous for its
' merchants adventurers ', sent forth further settlers to
sustain the English power. By rounding the salient of
the Leinster range, the Anglo-Norrhans traversed the
Irish lowland as far as Limerick, and the gap west of
the Galty Mountains and the Ballyhoura Hills became
important in opening up an English route to Cork. This
wide passage among the Armorican ranges has now been
followed by the Great Southern and Western Railway,
the construction of which completes the long history of
The road land-communication between the south-west and the
south- capital of Ireland. The route is obvious enough as far
west, as Charleville, and runs across the limestone of the plain,
between the Leinster barrier and the Castlecomer plateau
on the east and the Armorican outliers that rise boldly
in Queen's County and Tipperary on the west. The low
limestone country is similarly followed round the end of
the elongated Galty-Ballyhoura dome, until the road
faces the closely-set ranges of the south, where Mallow
now stands upon the Blackwater. Here, however, there
is only one pass to be surmounted. By utilizing a con-
sequent valley descending to the Blackwater, and another
descending southward to the Lee, the road and the railway
cross the Old Red Sandstone arch in a narrow gap only
460 feet above the sea. It is easy to see how the possession
of Dublin by a mobilized force of soldiers, accustomed
to cavalry excursions and supported by supplies from
oversea, enabled the Anglo-Normans to enforce their
rule throughout the lower ground of Ireland. Louth,
Meath, Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary,
Limerick, all lay open to them. Most of the higher masses
in these counties are merely islands rising from the plain.
Kerry was held to some extent by the possession of the

THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER

49

Ballyhoura gap, which also gave access to the subsequent
valleys stretching east and west, as guiding lines, through
Cork. Wexford was easily reached by sea from Dublin,
and Waterford, the first prize of Strongbow, became a
recognized gateway between Wales and the new domains
in the heart of Tipperary.^

Through all this country Anglo-Norman castles rose. The
holding the bridge-heads and dominating what may be builders,
regarded as clearings in the Irish lands. A century earlier,
the same system of government by local tyrants had
confirmed Norman rule in Wales and England. When
terrorism had done its work, the central power could take
over the subjugated districts, and an appeal to justice
became possible through union under the overlord or
king. In Ireland, however, the overlord was far away,
and the vices of ' self-determination ' were more easily
practised by the barons in their separated strongholds.
The castles on the margins of the conquered territory
were stained by acts of treachery and murder rather than
sustained by valour ; and some, like the massive tower
of Bunratty,^ were stormed by infuriated clansmen, were
rebuilt under royal authority, were again captured, and
remained in Irish hands down to the great rising of
1641.

On the other hand, intermarriage with the Irish, and
a sense of common interests in the outpost, created milder
relations in many regions of the plainland. Even in the
barrier of Leinster, a respect grew up between man and
man that was fatal to the formal divisions insisted on
by EngUsh law. When Art MacMurrogh of Leinster

» See the list of shires under English jurisdiction as early as
King John's reign (1210), in P. W. Joyce, Short History of Ireland.
p. 288 (1895).

2 G. U. Macnamara, ' The Antiquities of Limerick, &c.'. Roy.
Soc. Antiqu. Ireland, p. 105 (1916).

D

2244

50 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

married the daughter of a Fitzgerald of Kildare, it is
characteristic of the times that the DubHn government,
instead of hailing the entente and using it to their own
advantage, at once confiscated the lady's property in
the plainland.

Froissart's story, however, taken down from the lips
of a knight whom he met at Eltham, gives a distinctly
A story pleasing picture of life among the tribal Irish. Henry
wiu°° ' Christead, or Chrystall, or Castide,i told the chronicler
how he had been carried off by the wild Irish during
a skirmish near Dublin, and brought ' into a town and
a strong house among the woods, waters, and mires *.
His captor was a ' goodly man ' named Brian Costerec.
They lived together for seven years, and Christead
married Brian's daughter. Ultimately — and this makes
it probable that the ' town ' was somewhere down in
Wicklow — the father-in-law was in turn taken prisoner
during Art MacMurrogh's attack upon the English in
1394. He was riding the swift horse that, seven years
before, had carried Christead too far among the retreat-
ing enemy, and Ormond's soldiers recognized it, probably
as a favourite whom they had often backed. Brian was
given his release on condition that he surrendered Christead
and Christead's family, which the old man was very loath
to do ; for, says the Englishman, ' he loved me well and
my wife his daughter and our children '. It was finally
arranged that one of the granddaughters should remain
with Brian. Christead settled in Bristol with his wife
and his second daughter, who evidently married into
England, while the elder sister married in Ireland.

* If we try to transcribe the signatures from ten or twelve
business-letters of the twentieth century, we soon come to excuse
the mediaeval copyists for their apparent carelessness about
names. Christead's story is to be found in Froissart's Chronicles,
Lord Beraers* translation, Globe edition, p. 430.

THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER

51

' And ', Christead went on to say, ' the language of Irish
is as ready to me as the EngUsh tongue, for I have
always continued with my wife and taught my children
the same speech.' Christead was in consequence employed
by Richard II to instruct the four kings who had sub-
mitted themselves, being for a while tired of warfare, in
knightly usage and Anglo-Norman manners. One of his
duties, characteristically enough, was to introduce class
distinctions among the members of the Irish clans.
Froissart asked how the war ended in such a friendly
fashion, and he received an explanation which should
have sunk deeply into the hearts of English statesmen.
Richard had appeared in the field under the arms and
colours of Edward the Confessor, a saintly prince revered
in Ireland. He had not flaunted the ' libbards and
flower-de-luces quarterly ', which would have marked
him as a European stranger ; and he appealed to the
Irish chiefs through bonds of affection in the past. The
blockade of the ports by the English had been severe
and the show of martial power had been impressive ;
but this imaginative touch proved to the western folk
that King Richard was ' a good man and of good con-
science '. j

This may not at first sight seem to be a question of
geography ; but it was a recognition of local feeUng in
the outpost, and feeling not necessarily on English Unes.
The clash between feudalism and the clan-system, which
was illustrated by the arrangement of Richard H's
dinner-table at Dublin Castle, was not, however, to be
readily smoothed over. Ormond, who spoke Irish
fluently, probably understood the situation far better
than the new-comers ; but the narrow sea, which had
preserved some individuality in Ireland, provided, for
good or ill, a highway from the port of Bristol. The ideas

D 2

52 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

of Bristol, and, through Bristol, of East Anglia, became
the dominant ideas of Dublin, and even Richard, five
years later, carried the English leopards ' en blason ' into
Ireland.^

The kings of Ulster and Thomond, as well as Art

MacMurrogh of the Leinster hills, submitted to Richard

at the close of his first campaign ; but the fighting in

Leinster had been stubborn. The English army had

landed at Waterford, and moved up the west side of the

chain, keeping watch from the Barrow valley on the

mouths of the tributary glens. The highland loomed so

largely in the strategy of the time that the terms of

peace demanded its evacuation, and a promise to that

effect was given. War, however, again broke out when

the king left Dublin, and MacMurrogh's hillmen swept

The down on Kilkenny and Kildare. Although the King of

front for England was also Dominus Hiherniae, Englishmen for

English several centuries were able to cultivate their love of

arms.

adventure on a double fighting front. During Richard's
second expedition,^ a boy named Henry, ' qui estoit bel
et jeune bacheler ', earned his spurs amid scenes of
devastation at a battle in the Leinster foot-hills. Sixteen
years later, we find him riding into London as the hero

» For this he had received much provocation in the meantime.
The blazon was noted in Carlow by the author referred to in the
next footnote.

2 The details of this campaign are well known from the metrical
account of Jehan Creton, who took part in it ; ' Histoire du Roy
d'Angleterre Richard. Compos^e par un gentilhom^e francois
de marque qui fut a la suite dudict Roy. 1399,' Brit. Mus.,
Harleian MSS., 1319, with illuminated illustrations drawn by
or under the direction of the author. For text, translation, and
critical notes, see J. Webb, Archaeologia, vol. xx, pp. 1-442
(1824). Also P. W. Dillon, ibid., vol. xxviii, pp. 77 and 85, for
references to the author, who was ' varlet de chambre ' to
Charles VI.

THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER

53

of Harfleur and Azincourt. In Ireland, he experienced
the dangers of a passage across the granite upland in
pursuit of the resourceful highlanders, whose tactics
nearly brought the English army to destruction. The
armour-plated expeditionary force, unaccustomed to the
treachery of mountain-bogs ^ and of bracken deep enough
to hide a foeman, was finally rescued from starvation
in a camp on the eastern shore by food-ships sent from
Dublin. It reached the well-furnished colonial city
overland, probably viewing with some hesitation the
O'Byrnes and the O'Tooles grouped along the skyline
from the Glen of the Downs to the ridge above Kil-
gobbin. Three years later, the struggle between plain
and highland was emphasized in the same critical country,
only twelve miles south-east of the city, and the civic
sword of Dublin records to this day the victory of the
English holders of the gate of Ireland. I

Even in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when Drake and
Cavendish circled the globe as harriers of the colonies of
Spain, the slopes of Slieve Roe, five miles from Dublin,
offered a ready refuge to the enemies of England. Lord
Grey was driven back in 1580 from the difficult valley of
Glenmalure, and it is significant that Shakespeare in
1599,2 when he pictured the return of the troops from
Azincourt, turned the thoughts of his audience towards
an Irish campaign, the issue of which was still uncertain.
The suggested comparison was unfortunate, since, while
the groundUngs were applauding in the London theatre,
the army of Essex, retiring from the west, received
a shattering blow at Arklow, between the stubborn
range of Leinster and the sea.

» As Creton says, ' qui nest bien songueux . . . il y faut en-
fondrer Jusques aux rains, ou tout dedens entrer'.

* The Life of King Henry the Fifth, Act v, Prologue, line 30.

'

54 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

Down to the bitter days of 1798, the Leinster glens
were the shelter of all who took to the heather in defiance
of common government centred in the port of Dublin.
The The famous Military Road, from Rathfarnham to the
Road. valley where the Aughrim River provides a passage,
through the hills, was constructed in 1800 to hold the
heads of the glens, and to gather, as it were, on the
uplands the whispers of the secret woods. It runs
along the uninhabited watershed, descending here and
there to convenient intersections with roads coming up
the consequent valleys from the sea. The barrack-forts
that were built at these strategic points became, in happier
times, first police-stations and then ruins ; but a traverse
of the half-abandoned highway still gives reality and
explanation to much of Irish history.

The story of the Leinster Chain in its relation to the
lowlands seems crowded with episodes of war. The
destruction of prosperous towns and monasteries by
various raiders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
shows, however, that there were intervals in which
prosperity might be gained. The quarrels among the
Anglo-Norman barons, who took advantage of the com-
parative remoteness of the outpost, are responsible for
many acts of devastation ; and the Irish chiefs, especially
in the west, were only too ready to maintain their ancient
animosities by alliances with the castle-builders of the
plain. Ringed about by the sea, and untouched by the
larger sweep of policy in Europe, Ireland remained
a prey to men who assumed, over a few sparsely inhabited
counties, the dangerous prerogatives of kings.

The brutalities of war in bygone centuries are usually
attributed to the peculiar malignancy of invaders ; but
it is fair to remember that all invaders are malignant to
the folk whom they overrun. They do not seize on ports

THE BARRIER OF LEINSTER

55

and harbours for the benefit of dwellers in the hinterland,
and we may ask if a united Ireland would have been
restrained by tenderness and remorse if it had felt a call
for national expansion and had settled on the coast of
Wales. The spread of conquest inwards from the harbour-
heads may be inevitable for the security of the power
that holds the shore-; the holding of the shore may be
inevitable for the security of the homeland of the entering
power. The conception of hereditary enmity between
peoples may be left to interested politicians ; its survival
in debates on what is called ' the Irish question ' may be
traced, however, to the geographical position of the
outpost. The open lands of western Europe have been
the scene of so many illogical alarums and excursions,
leading to so many loose and variable cross-aUiances,
that a healthy opportunism has prevailed over the
melancholy facts of history. France, for instance, has
forgiven the judicial murder of Jeanne d'Arc, as well as
the recall of the Bourbons by the coalized kings in 1814.
England feels no rancour against the Dutch for the
massacre of Amboyna and the humiliating invasion of
the Medway. Since the twelfth century, however, the
Irish have had to settle their external differences with
one power only, whose territory, like a huge breakwater,
divides them from the continental turmoil on the east
(map i) . Under the more tolerant outlook of the twentieth
century, the same geographical conditions should lead
to hereditary friendship, and to the recognition of the
outpost as a natural link between the continent of Europe
and the great English-speaking commonwealths beyond
the western sea.

Spread of
conquest
from the
harbours.

Britain
as the
break-
water.

56 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

VII. UPLANDS OF THE NORTH

The north of Ireland is broadly divided into two
regions of very different physical character. The western
of these is distinctly ' Caledonian ' (see p. ii). It is
profoundly influenced by the system of folding that was
developed in early Devonian times. The antique sedi-
ments, invaded by granite, now appear as resisting
quartzites and gleaming mica-schists. There is a marked
scarcity of lime throughout the area, and such small
bands of crystalline limestone as occur among these
ancient marine strata are knotty with silicates that have
developed in them, including brown garnets often more
than an inch across. While the quartzites and the
granites provide no arable soil, the orange-brown loams
on the areas of mica-schist are far more inviting to the
The settler, and the valley of the River Foyle bears a high
of the reputation in a region that is notably of a highland type.
°^ ®' Glacial drift here and there ameliorates the surface. The
Foyle opens on a drowned depression occupied by a broad
inlet of the Atlantic, and Moville, on the western side,
has become a calling-station for Canadian liners. The
town of Derry was built round an abbey of the sixth
century, in the oak-woods where the highland country
drops to a fertile band along Lough Foyle. It has been
connected with the English from the close of the sixteenth
century only, and its modern name of Londonderry
records the ' plantation ' of the district, mainly by
Scotchmen, in the reign of James I. A predecessor of
the city may be seen in the famous Grianan of Aileach,
a stone fortress 800 feet above the sea, on a hill that
overlooks the route from Lough Swilly to the head of
the shallow harbour of Lough Foyle. Here the O'Neills,

UPLANDS OF THE NORTH

57

as kings of Ulster, founded their palace ' in the sun ',
and held an important passage into the country of their
rivals, the O'Donnells. All the land to the west is ' Cale-
donian '. Lough Swilly and Mulroy Bay are picturesque

Sc(kLE OF Miles

in 20 30 <a

Map 3. The Northern Uplands and the relations of
Ireland with Scotland.

and sinuous inlets that record the sinking of the coast High-
and the last inflow of the Atlantic on Eurasia. The roads Donegal,
from Letterkenny westward to the superbly cliffed coast
of Donegal (p. 22) cross the axes of the folding, and they
rise over successive ridges and descend into long glens

"74^'f^^«;''-:

58

IRELAND THE OUTPOST

stretching to the north-east. The narrow valley of
Glen Beagh is in a line with the Great Glen of Scotland.
At its south-west end, on a granite upland (fig. 6), a pass
leads over to the Gweebarra valley, which continues the
same line of European structure down to the estuary
north of Glenties.

Here was Tirconnell, the O'Donnells' country; here was
the natural shelter of a highland race. Sixteen miles
south of the Gweebarra, the O'Donnells, the relatives
and perhaps therefore the inveterate antagonists of the
O'Neills of Tyrone, looked out from their fortress of
Donegal upon a milder and more cultivated land. They
carried their raids through O'Ruarc's territory of Breifne
among the terraced limestone hills, and in due time
came against the Normans, who sought to hold in Sligo
the north-west corner of the plain. The O'Conors from
the south, renowned for turbulence, held armed encounters
with the O'Donnells on a debatable lowland on the
seaward side of the Ox Mountains, and the Anglo-
Norman power was supported in the open ground between
the highland-blocks of Donegal and Connemara by the
frequency among the native chieftains of battle, murder,
and sudden death. The O'Donnells and the O'Neills, as
opportunity served, fought on the English side in their
zeal to find an ally against their neighbours ; yet, when
concerted action was organized to break the devastating
forces of Elizabeth, the west, from Kinsale to Inishowen,
looked with well-placed confidence to the mountaineers
of Donegal. The name of young Hugh Roe O'Donnell,
who twice escaped from Dublin, and who (kove back
Clifford's army from the Curlew Hills, is enshrined beside
those of Robert Bruce and John Hampden as one of the
foremost defenders of liberty in our islands.

The Curlew Hills (fig. 7) form a fitting scene for the

Fig. 5. THE DEVIL'S GLEN IN THE FOOT-HILLS OF
THE LEINSTER CHAIN.

Fig. 6. IN THE HIGHLANDS OF TIRCONNELL. Looking
north-eastwards towards Glen Beagh.

UPLANDS OF THE NORTH

last exploit of Red Hugh. They rise gently from the great The
plainland in which the Shannon wanders ; two of the of the
lakelets that are typical of the limestone region send up §|J"ig®^
arms into valleys of the sandstone range; but, as we
ascend, we realize that this range forms a genuine barrier,
and we look northward from its crest into a land of high
limestone cliffs and plateaus, crossed on the seaward side
by the bare Caledonian ridge that continues the Ox
Mountains almost into the wilds of Donegal. The
Armorican axis of the Curlew Hills must have been
regarded by the hillmen as an advanced rampart, facing
the plain, the region of constituted authority, that
stretched away to Dublin. The quarrel in this frontier-
zone goes farther back than the days when O'Neills and
O'Donnells were for once united and made common
cause against Elizabeth ; it goes farther back than the
march of the mail-clad Normans of Kildare to build their
stronghold on the shores of Sligo Bay. Brian of Kincora
found it well, in his armed demonstration of 1005, to
bring even Danish allies with him across the Curlew Hills
as a menace to unconquered Ulster ; and the battle of
Drumcliff, arising mainly out of a question of monastic
copyright, was fought under Ben Bulben in a. d. 561
(fig. 2). It is noteworthy that even at that early period
the men of the north broke the armies of the High King
of Tara on the highland margin of Tirconnell.

The central block of Tyrone consists of Caledonian The
features, including some of the oldest rocks of Ireland. hoW^of
A broad stretch of Old Red Sandstone, yielding richly Tyrone,
coloured soils, extends in the south towards Lough
Erne ; but the whole region is transitional between the
moorlands and the limestone country, and retains much
of the wildness of the northern highlands. It is dissected
by the numerous tributaries of the Mourne-Strule system.

6o IRELAND THE OUTPOST

which drains ultimately into the Foyle, and the life of
the people has for centuries been associated with the
traffic of the northern ports.
Lavas of The eastern uplands of Ulster are far more uniform in

Ulster

structure and material than the broken country of the
west. A great outpouring of basaltic lavas in Oligocene
times covered and preserved the chalk downs, which
spread at that remote period far beyond the present
limits of the ' white limestone ' of north-eastern Ireland.
Sheet after sheet, the basalt has built up gloomy plateaus,
the later flows overlapping the earlier ones, and probably
extending in the volcanic epoch over a large part of
The Tirconnell.^ Among the massive flows of the later series,

Giant's . °

Cause- one, lying m part at the present sea-level, has become
^^^' famous as the ' Giant's Causeway '. Its rubbly top has
been worn away by the waves, exposing the handsomely
columnar lower portion, in which slow cooling and
j shrinking went on in contact with the ground. Two

similar flows, one above the other, give an appearance
of titanic architecture to the fine cliffs eastward of the
Causeway. A similar occurrence, in basalt of the same
age, on the little isle of Staffa north of lona has given
rise to the legend that the Causeway runs beneath the
sea to the west of Mull ; and we may well believe that
St. Columba or some one of his company was responsible
for an observation that suggested to the Irish missionaries
a link between the Hebrides and the homeland.

The great basaltic plateaus have been bent and lowered
by far later earth-movements, so as to form the basin of
Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Islands.
East and west of the lake, they rise to heights of more
than 1,000 feet, and their upturned edges form a for-

» See J. R. Kilroe in Memoir Geol. Surv. Ireland on ' The Inter-
basaltic Rocks of North-East Ireland', p. 120 (1912).

•'^K'.

^..

UPLANDS OF THE NORTH

6i

bidding scarp facing eastward over Belfast Lough and
westward over the flat of raised marine clay along Lough
Foyle. This scarp is one of the great features of the
north, and the grim black lavas are strikingly contrasted
with the thin white band of chalk arid the red slopes of
Triassic strata that underlie the volcanic series.

The streams that notch the plateaus on their eastern The
side Have produced deep and sheltered valleys, young in Antrim,
all their features, from their cliffed walls to the waterfalls
that echo in their floors. These are the well-remembered
Glens of Antrim. The prevalent note of Moira O'Neill's
verse ^ is the longing to be back among them. Almost
within sound of the machinery of busy mills and the clang
of hammers in the shipyards of Belfast, these wooded
vales lead up into an older Ireland. Small white farm-
houses are scattered on this inland region, like those that
spot the landscape in the south and west ; on the higher
terraces the heather spreads over miles of old and desic-
cating mountain-bog. Here and there a half-obliterated
track, perhaps a path of foray or of pilgrimage to the more
favoured valley of the Lagan, runs across the basaltic
plateau. In places it is marked by a line of ancient
thorn-trees, bent over in an easterly direction by the
wind. It still serves the workers from the mines of iron
ore and bauxite when they cross the upland on a visit
to their relatives in the glens.

The older faith of Ireland, strong through centuries of
persecution, lingers here in the heart of north-east Ulster.
The MacDonnells of the glens, however, were looked on
by their neighbours in the sixteenth century as an alien
race, since they had recently returned, under the name of
Scots, as an overflow from settlements in the Hebrides.
Yet, as is well known, the Scots were originally an Irish
» Songs of the Glens of Antrim, seventh impression, 1901.

62 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

folk, who had migrated a thousand years before, and had
ultimately given their name to the Pictish and possibly
' proto-Celtic ' lands of Caledonia.
Scots of The underlying floor of Antrim is essentially Cale-

Ulster

and Cale- donian. Crumpled strata of Silurian age appear throughout
donia. ^Yie hummocky fields of Down, and they pass under the
Mesozoic and Cainozoic beds ,on the north-west of the
Lagan vale. South and east of the great intrusive mass
of dolerite that forms Fair Head, gnarled schists and
gneisses of pre-Cambrian age are exposed in the region
of Glendun. These are a continuation of the promontory
of Kintyre (map 3), just as the Down country is a con-
tinuation of the Southern Uplands of Scotland. The grand
cliff ed headland, terminating in the Mull of Kintyre, is
conspicuous from the Antrim coast, and it forms one of
the finest features of the landscape on the descent through
Glenariff from the plateaus of Parkmore. Islay and the
twin domes of the Paps of Jura are visible across Rathlin
Island from the basaltic cliffs of Ballintoy. The coast of
Caledonia must have been well known to fishermen and
sea-captains before the first colonists from Ireland entered
its fjords in the second century of our era. The territorial
name Dalriada became common to north-east Ireland
and the Hebrides, and Fergus MacErc, in a. d. 503, trans-
ferred a well-appointed army of Scots from Ulster to the
Caledonian shore. It is uncertain whether the Gaelic
language was thus introduced from Ireland into its
present stronghold in the Scottish highlands, or whether
the settlement of the Scots was to some degree assisted by
the presence of a kindred speech. The invading Scots,
however, had been trained and already Christianized in
Jreland ; they planted their culture in the more savage
region of the Picts; and in due time, as the dominant
race in Caledonia, they met the Anglo-Saxon elements

UPLANDS OF THE NORTH

63

along the through-valley of the Clyde and Forth. Many
of their earUer characteristics became concealed by
minglings with the lowlanders, and by a response to
European influences, notably from France. The open
gateway of the Forth gave them an outlook on the
Continent, and the courtly knights of Paris, Dijon, or
Chalons were induced by royal alliances to share a rude
commissariat in campaigns against the English in the
Cheviots.! Though the Stewarts or Stuarts, who gave,
through James VI, a royal house to the United Kingdom,
were of Norman and English stock, many ruling families
of Scotland in the feudal days could trace their ancestry
to the Scots who came from Ireland. The long-drowned
valleys, and the promontories and islands of the sunken
Caledonian coast, which offer such a tempting prospect
from the uplands of the Irish north, are responsible for
a chain of events that deeply affected western Europe.

The final balance between subsidence and uplift that The
left the fjords of Scotland flooded and Ireland cut off as country,
an island allowed the sea to remain in the broad estuary
of the Lagan. Belfast Lough, however, for many centuries
played little part in the development of Ireland. The
great dike of dolerite that runs out from the shore at
Carrickfergus offered a natural site for a castle that
would command both the inlet and the track along the
coast. The stronghold placed here by the De Lacys
records the northerly extension of the Norman pale of
DubUn. The upland country at its back remained
essentially inimical to England, arid the inroads of the
MacDonnells from the Hebrides rendered it all the more
necessary for the dominant power to hold the bay.
Belfast, however, continued unimportant, and the town

' See Froissart on the hardships of the expedition under
Admiral Jean de Vienne.

64 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

was actually occupied by the O'Neills in the perilous
struggles of the sixteenth century. This great industrial
city owes its prosperity to the development of the linen
trade and to the general growth of mechanical arts since
the opening of the nineteenth century. The proximity
of the coalfields in Ayrshire and on the Solway Firth
has neutralized the scarcity of local supplies, and has
even held back the exploration of the Tyrone coalfield,
only 30 miles away in Ireland. The long sites for quays
and shipyards on the sheltered inlet have favoured ship-
building from 1854 onwards, and the artisan population,
largely drawn from the Scottish lowlands through the
Stuart plantation of the north, has proved an apt rival
to that along the estuary of the Clyde. In many ways,
whether we regard the MacDonnells of the Isles, who have
become MacDonnells of the Antrim glens, or the capable
and methodical artisans who form the very foundation
of industry in Belfast, or the energetic workers of small
farms throughout the tumbled lands of Down, we must
admit that north-eastern Ulster to-day resembles a colony
of Scotland. The geological map of the British Isles ^
presents a graphic picture of the conditions that have
given to the majority of the inhabitants of this area
a special point of view. To them the outlook is naturally
eastward, and their separate attitude in regard to the
rest of Ireland cannot be ascribed to mere perversity.

* The structure is well shown on the coloured geological map
of the British Isles, i inch to 25 miles, pubhshed by the Ordnance
Survey for the Geological Survey of Great Britain, price 2s.
This map deserves to be more widely known beyond our educa-
tional institutions. See also the coloured map in The Oxford
Survey of the British Empire, vol. i (19 14).

65

VIII. THE ARMORIGAN RANGES OF THE

SOUTH

The geographical conditions of that part of southern
Ireland which lies west of the grand scarp of the Comeragh
Mountains in the county of Waterford are well worthy
of special consideration. The ' Armorican ' folding Armori-
(p. 13), with its axes running fairly east and west, controls fand/^"
the whole of this picturesque and varied region. The
subsequent tributaries of the old rivers that came down
from the north have worked their way back along the
strips of Carboniferous Limestone or Slate that survive
between the upfolds of resisting Old Red Sandstone
(p. 14) . The long strike- valleys remind one of the structure
of the Juras ; but connecting cross-cuts or cluses are far
less frequent in the Irish ranges. The main entry into
this country from the plainland is through the low pass
south of Mallow, which has already been described
(p. 48). Mallow stands upon the Blackwater, already
a large stream after its descent from the Kerry border
30 miles farther to the west. The natural outlook for
this strategic town is thus eastward along the valley,
until, in 43 miles, the sea is reached in the harbour of
Dungarvan. The Blackwater, after trenching the Fermoy
plateau and traversing the beautiful woodlands at the
rocky narrows of Lismore, turns southward by the
right-angled bend of Cappoquin, joining at this point
the old consequent valley which probably at one time
carried the waters of the Suir. The low ground, however,
is continued eastward, along the downfold of limestone
to the bay. j

The drowned valley of the Suir and the sheltered port
of Waterford proved much more attractive to adventurers

2244 ' J,

66

IRELAND THE OUTPOST

from the sea than the open roadstead of Dungarvan. The
Normans, none the less, planted a castle at Dungarvan,
which became naturally linked with that upon the cliff-
edge at Lismore. In the area now occupied by Fermoy,
considerable additions of glacial drift ameliorate the
Old Red Sandstone uplands and offer attraction to the
cultivator. From Youghal, at the mouth of the conse-

Map 4. The Armorican Ranges of the south.

quent and tidal reach of the Blackwater, another fertile
band of Carboniferous strata stretches westward ; but
this has been worn down by the tributaries of various
transverse streams, and is only a ' through-valley * of
composite origin. It leads, however, very conveniently
into the drowned valley of the Owennacurra, a stream
flowing south through Midleton, and thence, behind
Great Island, into the similarly drowned terminal of the
Lee. From this point the prolonged subsequent valley
of the Lee provides a route west from the tidal estuary
at Cork to the moors of Gouganebarra, where a narrow
rocky pass in the Old Red Sandstone gives access to

"'r!r.

THE ARMORICAN RANGES OF THE SOUTH 67

a short valley descending to Bantry Bay. The passage-
way across the country thus lies once more from east
to west. I

Similarly the upper Bandon valley, approached by the
sinuous inlet of Kinsale, carries us away westward, until
we almost touch the head- waters of the Lee. We are
everywhere drawn in the end towards the indented
western coast, marked by wide-mouthed rias rather than
fjords, into which the storms of the Atlantic can still
drive destructive waves. \

In such a country, communication with the outer
world is naturally by sea. The steamers of Scottish
trading companies may still be seen close against the
sloping gardens of Kenmare, and the splendid port of The lure
Queenstown on Great Island, in these days of steam- atiantic
navigation, has made the southern Irishman and the ^*"^^-
southern Irishwoman more familiar with the alien muni-
cipality of New York than with the heart of the Britannic
commonwealth in London. The harbours of the outpost,
which in old times traded with Gaul and the Mediter-
ranean, have sent out thousands of the agricultural folk
of Cork and Kerry to seek a life in crowded cities in
a continent 3,000 miles away. It may be urged that the
economic conditions arising from the development of
machinery and the growth of factory-towns have reacted
in the same way upon the agricultural districts in Eng-
land ; but in that country the towns that have absorbed
the rural population lie only 50 or 60 miles from the
depleted cottage-homes . The labourer from an abandoned
farm in Cambridgeshire does not feel himself an exile in
Leicester or Northampton. In Ireland, the rents that
were demanded rather than obtained, and the consequent
evictions that took place before the passage of the land-
laws, intensified the distress caused in an agricultural

E 2

w-

68 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

country by the abolition of protective tariffs. In manu-
facturing England, a land of coal and iron ores, the
readjustment of modes of life was to some extent smoothed
over by the higher wages gained in towns. For an
Irishman, the towns were in any case those of another
country, and the break with home was made when the
steamer left the quay. When once the emigrant was
outside Cork Harbour, and the familiar green slopes and
woodlands lay behind, it mattered little if the foaming
race to the Hudson was longer than the coasting saunter
to the Thames. For young blood the call was irresistible
towards the new lands and new aspirations of the West.
Even now, when co-operation and organized com-
munications have enormously improved the agricultural
outlook, and when land, secured under recent acts of
reparation, can be sold at greatly enhanced prices, the
south-western counties suffer, in comparison with central
Ireland, from their geological structure and from the
Fertile folding of Armorican times. The proportion of barren
barren Old Red Sandstone in the uplands increases as we go
up ands. ^^^^ irom Helvick Head, and the fertile vales, sheltered
though they are, offer in the end but a limited com-
pensation as they die off against the moors. A broad
and serviceable lowland, based on limestone, occupies
the head of Dingle Bay ; but access to it from the central
plain is gained by a narrow pass between the head-waters
of the Blackwater and the Flesk. The railway from
Mallow to Killamey and Cahersiveen follows this course,
clinging to the limestone band ; but the western part of
it has to be built up boldly round Old Red Sandstone
headlands above the ria of Dingle, to find a pass at Kells
and thus to drop down into the Ferta valley. This
railway ends at the strategically important station of
Valencia Harbour, and communication with the Kenmare

' — TTT'^'^r'^i

Fig. 7. THE CURLEW HILLS FROM THE NORTH-WEST,
with Drumlins in the lowland.

Fig. 8. IN THE KERRY HIGHLANDS. Gap of Dunloe.

I

as an
epitome
of the
outpost.

THE ARMORICAN RANGES OF THE SOUTH 69

inlet across the ends of the spurs of Iveragh and Dun-
kerron is still maintained by road alone. Fifty miles of
driving thus serve to separate rather than to connect the
towns of Kenmare and Cahersiveen. The ria of Kenmare
is continued eastward by the Roughty valley, and along
this a branch railway descends from the Mallow and
Killarney line. The grand and serrated block of Mac-
GiUicuddy's Reeks, and the range that looks down on
the wooded wilderness of Glencar (p. 15), rise between
the routes that run along the coast, and the greater part
of this inland region is uninhabitable (fig. 8).

The wild promontory stretching south-west from Kerry
Killarney is typical of the seaboard-land of Kerry. The
eastern boundary of the county is carried along a moor-
land watershed, until it descends into a somewhat milder
district near the Shannon. Even here, the plateau of
Millstone Grit and Coal Measures, rising 1,000 feet above
the sea, faces the east as a forbidding rampart, up which
the road and railway to Listowel climb steeply to the
notch of Barnagh in the scarp. In Kerry the essential
difficulties of Ireland are emphasized and concentrated,
until the county seems an epitome of the outpost. Here
for untold generations the folk have looked westward
from long sea-inlets across diminishing and foam-swept
isles. They have seen the sun set in the Atlantic, and
the brown and cloud-capped ranges have barred them
from Eurasia on the east. The east has sent them the
Norsemen, the Anglo-Normans, and the incomprehensible
and composite people called the EngUsh, settlers in the
harbours, builders of castles, but in no sense permeating
the land. The quaint little port of Adare, for example,
seven miles south of the Shannon on the winding channel
of the Maigue, with its noble castle and the abbeys of
three communities, is essentially a creation of the Normans,

70 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

and the wealthy earls of Kildare here held the western
front. Beyond that front the older Irish, never adequately
welded with their northern kinsfolk as a nation, were
pressed towards the Atlantic by successive acts of spolia-
tion. In the Irish hills, as in the Scottish highlands, the
breaking down of the clan-system converted the local
chieftains into hereditary autocrats whose interest lay
now with one and now with another of the ruling parties
in the plainland. When an armed adventure ended in
disaster, the way was clear for further confiscation by
the larger and well-established powers ; and in all fair-
ness let it be remembered that the smallness of a nation
is no criterion of virtue, and that the larger powers also
have their rights. The dissatisfied dwellers on the
indented south-west Irish coast have invited again and
again, from Kinsale to Ardfert Bay, the help of strangers
overseas. The scenes of destruction in Munster during
the risings pf the sixteenth century cannot be attributed
to exceptional conditions in the outpost or to the special
malevolence of its overlords. Material expressions of
religious fervour had raged for a thousand years in
Christian Europe, and the massacres and penalties that
were supported by sectarian zeal in Ireland are paralleled
by those that have found their historians in France,
Germany, and the Netherlands. Our English schools,
however, still await a Motley who will show us Raleigh
at Smerwick or at Youghal as plainly as Drake at Cadiz
or on Plymouth Hoe. For the geographer, the tragedy
of Munster illustrates the spread of continental influences
through the open gate of Dublin ; but only the coldness
of philosophy will be content to leave the matter there.

71

'

IX. EXITS AND ENTRANCES. THE RAILWAY
MAP OF IRELAND j

Enough has been said to show the inevitable relation-
ship of Ireland to the larger and more populous island
on the east. The great extent of agricultural land in
Ireland, the growth of her fisheries, the increasing develop-
ment of dairying and poultry-farming, tend more and
more to emphasize the position of her industries as Agricul-
a natural complement to those that are prevalent in dustries.
England. Coal can be easily imported for the mechanical
trades of Belfast, Dublin, Wexford, and Cork, and the
further exploration of the concealed coalfield in Tyrone
may add appreciably to Irish home-supplies. The mining
of metallic minerals has suffered the same fluctuations
as in Britain ; but a war ranging over a large part of the
globe has shown the necessity for keeping in view and Mineral
registering every possible native source of copper, zinc,
lead, and sulphur, to name no rarer substances. The
importance in war-time of the deposits of iron pyrites
(' sulphur ore ') in the county of Wicklow was pointed
out by Warington W. Smyth, in his capacity of Govern-
ment surveyor, as far back as 1853.^

Much has been written on the economic relations of
Ireland with Great Britain, and the best guarantee of
friendly commercial intercourse lies in the frank recogni-
tion that neither country can do without the products of
its nearest neighbour. Geological conditions have deter-
mined this much for us ; but even within the ruled lines
of commerce the human touch is often useful. Education

• ' Mines of Wicklow and Wexford ', Records Roy. School of
Mines, vol. i, part 3, p. 396 (1853).

resources.

72 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

may be trusted on both sides of the channel to efface
the misstatements that still continue to divide, and in
time it may be recognized that free communications for
Ireland across Britain mean free communications with
the parent mainland of Eurasia.
Trans- The eastern gates of Ireland have been indicated in
routes preceding pages. Lough Foyle and the drowned inlet of
Europe. Cork Harbour have served as links with transatlantic
lands. Galway Bay, where the limestone plainland is
entered by a broad indent of the sea, is regarded by
many as a future port for steamers from the United
States. The quaint old town of Galway, with its tall
castellated houses, remembers fondly its direct trade
with Spain, when sailing vessels of loo tons burthen
went rouijd Mizen Head and braved the Atlantic rollers
in the Bay of Biscay. A rival project to the Galway
route proposes to connect Blacksod Bay in Mayo, where
a great barrier of gneiss and granite protects the harbour
on the west, with the nearest practicable port in
Canada, and thus to open up a new route within our
commonwealth to Vancouver, AustraHa, and the east
of Asia.

For these reasons the entrances and exits of Ireland,
and the railways connecting them across the country, at •
present attract the attention of engineers. The gauge
used for Irish lines remains, like many things in the
outpost, comfortable and insular. Train-ferries, such as
are in common use in the Baltic, were held until recently
to be impossible in our tidal British seas ; but, during
the stress of warfare, many impossibilities have happened
in the Strait of Dover. Given a train-ferry to an Irish
port, and a slight reduction of the Irish gauge, passengers
and goods might be brought uninterruptedly from the
mouth of the English Channel tunnel to Galway or to

EXITS AND ENTRANCES

73

Blacksod Bay. And, when the linking tunnel is made,
a railway-coach might come through to the trans-Irish
line from an internationalized station in Constantinople.
The rapid development of aerial mail-services will perhaps
retard, but will hardly run counter to these schemes.
The outpost, the * boterasse ', has undoubtedly assumed
a new geographical importance in the eyes of Europe.

Nor is the issue purely material ; there will always
be a touch of romance for the traveller as he comes
through Ireland, among the small white homesteads and
the strips of farms, where the ploughed land curves over
ancestral drumUns of the north ; and alongside the
white lakelets, where the peat is cut close against the
shores ; and so perhaps to the great limestone scarps
of Sligo, and between the desolate moors of Mayo and
the sea ; and then to the Atlantic; foaming up against
the rampart, now clamorous, now murmuring in content,
across the wrecks of half-remembered isles.

The problems of long-distance travellers may be left
with confidence in the hands of those who seek to organize
our railways under national control, and thus to bring
into harmony their many uncorrelated and competing
systems. If, however, an experiment in nationaUzation
is to be made, Ireland offers an obvious and tempting
field. In no part of the United Kingdom is there so large
a consensus of opinion in favour of unification. It has
been well pointed out that the present Irish railway
system has been courageously built up in the face of
a decreasing population. Nothing but praise can be
given to its mail-services, and such inconveniences as
occur are due to the uncertainties of communication
across the encircling seas. But the railway map of The
Ireland, viewed as a picture, presents a bewildering railway
number of loose ends, as if the main lines had sent out systems.

74 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

feelers that were unable to attain their goals, and had
stopped short of their first intention of being useful con-
nexions across country. As a matter of fact, in many
cases no such benign intention was in the minds of the
designers, since the connexion would have linked their
enterprise or lack of enterprise with the service of a rival
company. The division of a small region between a large
number of privately owned concerns leads to very irritat-
ing intervals where transfer from one main line to another
should be easy. This absence of correlation is especially
noticeable in Belfast, where a wait of four hours between
the principal systems is not uncommon. The absence
of central stations is as marked as it is in England, though
their construction has been in recent years a benej&cent
feature of continental policy ; but it seems hard to justify
the four separate terminal stations of Londonderry,
a town containing only 40,000 people, or the singularly
broken nature of the links that might connect the lines
of three great companies from Waterford, Galway,
Dublin, and Belfast in the hillside village of Collooney.

Sometimes for economic reasons when opposed by
natural obstacles, and sometimes, it would seem, from
pure indifference, the railways in the outpost have
neglected the interests of a number of provincial towns.
The boldly conceived Wicklow and Wexford route,
through the tunnels of Bray Head and across the open
drift-land south of Greystones, planted its stations on
the precarious sea-front, some miles from the places that
they are supposed to serve. An early scheme for running
direct from Dublin to Cavan along the line of the old
coach-road through Virginia had to be abandoned, and
the Silurian upland south-east of Cavan is now hesitat-
ingly approached by two antennae, one reaching Oldcastle
and the other Kingscourt. The Great Northern line from

.*--'y^m^'

)

EXITS AND ENTRANCES

V"v**'ff!w^*»7j'>r^=j;T«^^'Tr'5*'

75

Dublin to Belfast takes the stiff climb across the Cale-
donian moors north of Dundalk ; but it could not descend
with the road into the groove of Newry. This progressive
port, with its two railway-stations, thus lies on a branch,
while Banbridge, farther north, is shorn of the through-
traffic of coaching days in favour of a d6tour to Porta-
down. While the Midland Railway Company of England
now controls the lines in north-east Ulster, the London
and North- Western Company has planted a colony on
the raised beach of Greenore, and runs its own trains
thence to Dundalk station to join the lines for Dublin
and Enniskillen. These factors seem opposed to a har-
monious local scheme of organization, but not to one
embracing the three kingdoms. I

When the shrewd ItaUan immigrant Bianconi ran his Long

Cell's cLIld

first public ' long car ' from Clonmel to Cahir in 1815, motor-
he initiated a system that is capable of great development <^o^<^^^s.
to-day. The motor-coach and the commercial lorry may
solve many of the present difficulties of cross-communica- •
tion in Ireland, but such ventures cannot well be left to
uncorrelated private enterprise. As in the Scottish
highlands, the rural mail-cars frequently carry passengers,
and it now remains to establish a service for the pubUc
that shall be attractive by its comfort and shall ply
within reasonable hours. Good progress has already been
made in this direction along the coastland between
Bundoran and BelmuUet. The extraordinary improve-
ment in tar-bound road-surfaces in England, as evidenced
by the condition of the roads to Folkestone and Dover
after the traffic caused by four years' army service, is
sure to have its effect in Ireland, and the new engineering
may bring many remote villages into easy and economical
connexion with their market-towns. Such developments
of road-traffic must, however, be co-ordinated with the

76 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

railway time-tables, and here, in the convenient limits of
an island, a general control seems indicated.

What the co-operative principle has done so efficiently
for Irish farming can be done for Irish transport if the
systems of internal communication can be boldly treated
as a whole. Movement within the island means also
movement to and from the ports. The discussion of the
effect in pounds sterling on Irish trade belongs to the
economic sphere ; ^ but the effect on human intercourse
appeals to all who have felt in the past the restraining
pressure of geographic conditions in the outpost.

X. EPILOGUE

The tenth section of this essay may be written to
suit various tastes : statistically, that is with an eye to
economics, which are cold comfort to young hearts ;
historically, for which no man or woman has yet found
perfect aptitude ; GaeUcally, for those who base their
ideals on the days when all were the equal sons of kings ;
prophetically, the road where timorous hope winds amid
a maze of shell-holes ; or rhetorically, for those whose
vision of the wrongs of Ireland obscures the rights of any
other nation. The geographer, seeking for the truth,
and yet claiming some perception of the imaginative
arts, may keep aloof from any of these courses. He
knows that the outpost cannot be moved farther from
Eurasia except by a reduction of its area on the eastern
or European flank. He may rejoice in the open gate of
Dublin, or may seek a retreat from controversy in the

* See, for instance, C. H. Oldham, ' Town and Country Life and
Administration in Ireland ', Oxford Survey of the British Empire,
vol. i, pp. 447-63 (1914)-

EPILOGUE

77

shadow of the Wicklow glens. He at least can realize
the inexorable facts of Nature, which have defined the
boundaries of the outpost and the channels of the * narrow
seas '. Moreover, for the scientific worker, this tenth
section has been already written. The Irish poet A. E.
has stated the position for us, and his note of mingled
pride and hope rings through the outpost as a trumpet-
call :i

We would no Irish sign efface.
But yet our lips would gladlier hail
The firstborn of the Coming Race
Than the last splendour of the Gael.
No blazoned banner we unfold —
One charge alone we give to youth,
Against the sceptred mjrth to hold
The golden heresy of truth. j

Nothing can be gained by a return to the Gaelic epochs
of aloofness and division, when Queen Medb summoned
the hosts from south and west, and even from the
rocky fortress at the Liffey gate, for the harrying of
Ulster and the destruction of the Red Branch knights.
As recently as 1916, when civilization itself was threatened,
the appeal to centuries of misrepresentation and mis-
understanding gave us once more a western war-front in
the limits of the Anglo-Norman pale. Does the remedy
lie in education, in the growth of technical colleges, or
perchance in the Carnegie libraries that adorn the Irish
villages, combining recreative evenings with an adequate
censorship of books ? The remedy lies, as Thevenin puts
it, not in organized systems, but somewhere in the heart
of man. * Aimez-vous les uns les autres ! Mais il y
a prds de deux mille ans qu'on ne fait plus que repeter
ces choses-la.' ^

* Collected Poems, by A. E., p. 230 (1913).

' Denis TMvenin, Civilisation, 1914-17, p. 271 (1918).

78 IRELAND THE OUTPOST

Let us come back to our geography, for the gist of the
matter was determined by the latest movements of the
European platform and is set down clearly on the map.
The gate of Ireland is at Dublin, and the gate stands
open to the dawn. Westward stretch the gulfs of the
Atlantic ; eastward lie the friendly and the narrow
seas.

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